I remember standing at the edge of a cliff. Looking out at the big wide blue ocean. Looking down and seeing a beautiful scary blue unknown. My heart pounding in my chest like the sound of an epic climactic drum solo. Should I jump? Should i let go of every fear, every doubt every what if? Should i abandon all i thought i knew? Should i trust that the fall will bring freedom instead of regret?
I was standing at the edge of my seemingly ordinary, but yet surprisingly weird and random life, Our omnipresent creator whispering: “Do you trust me as much as you love me?” “Of coarse I love you,” I answered, “as much as my cold little heart is capable of loving. You know how much I love you, and You know how much and how long I have longed to trust you as much as I love You.” Thoughts flooded my mind. Would I be willing to trust Him? Abandoning all my defenses and surrendering, giving up everything for something so much more then I could ever imagine? Am I just always going to be the sum of every high and every low? Would I trust Him if everything and everyone in this big wide world seemed to say that He is deceiving me? I paused.
I am sure I would. Because out of all the things I don’t know, and there are many, I know this one thing to be true: That it is impossible for Him to tell a lie. It is impossible that He could ever deceive me. I am often overcome by fear just thinking of the things He would ask of me if I chose to actually trust Him, but I never seem to come to the point to doubt Him in that way. It is in fact myself I am afraid of, not of Him or trusting in Him, and even if the whole world should tell me or try to convince me that He could deceive me, I should know it to be impossible. And if it ever happens to be that He can deceive me, He may. It makes no difference. I must love Him and trust Him as long as I exist. I can not live without loving Him.
I have come to a point where I want to, with my whole will, make it in a way that would satisfy and please Jesus. Just a glimpse into a world and existence without Him has staggered and appalled my heart so much that I feel like I can never be the same again. My eyes are open, and for the first time I could see that deep down in the deepest parts of my heart I really only had one desire, not for any of the things that He could promise me, but for Him and Him alone. All I want is to be allowed to follow Him forever and wherever. Other desires might distract me and bring me down, but I know, from the centre of who I am and who He says I am, that nothing could fill, fit or satisfy in me the way that He can. Nothing else matters, only to love Him and to obey Him. I don’t always know why it should be so, but it just is. It is like Much-Afraid said in Hinds Feet: “All the time it is suffering to love and sorrow to love, but it is lovely to love Him in spite of this, and if I should cease to do so, I should cease to exist.”
What then have I learned you as reader might wonder:
-Well firstly, I learned that I should accept all that happens to me, and everything my path leads to with joy and grace. That I should not try and avoid or dodge it but accept it and lay it all on the altar.
-Secondly, I learned that I should come to the altar and forgive all that others may have or may still do against me with no bitterness, anger or fear. May I always receive power to bring good and carry grace in all evil.
-The third thing was more of a reminder. That Jesus never ever sees me as I am, fearful and hard hearted and prideful, but that He sees me as I will be when He had done what He promised. He has always handled me with the same love and grace and mercy you would a queen in the grandest of palaces. I can not tell you how much I want to start regarding others in the same way.
Every situation in life, no matter how crooked and dark and ugly it appears to be, if it is reacted to in love and forgiveness and obedience to His will can be transformed. Light can drive away darkness. He purposefully allows us to be brought into contact with the bad and evil things that He wants changed. He wants us to jump into the blue and dark unknown. Perhaps, just maybe, that is the part He wants us to play in the world. That where sin and sorrow and suffering and darkness abound, we may be there, fully immersed, and allow Him teach us so to react to them in ways that He did, that out of them we can become the people who He always intended us to be. That is the only really satisfactory way of dealing with darkness and suffering and sorrow, not just binding it and speaking and moving against it, so that it cannot work harm, but whenever possible overcoming it with good.
So here we are. Standing at the edge of a cliff. He is asking us to trust Him as much as we love Him. Will you jump with me?