Once in a great while, I find myself feeling as if I’ve been backed into a corner by circumstances beyond my control, or even beyond my wildest fears. But usually a mild spiritual awakening occurs and I realize I’m not that cornered rodent with fangs and talons blazing, but I’m just a simple man in a complex reality governed less by coincidence than by providence. That should be peace enough, but some days it’s not. I guess I’m the only one waiting for the next train home? At least the platform looks pretty empty from where I stand.
As life rises and falls with every oscillation of distant solar flares and creeps along over every speed bump that some wannabe-know-it-all-safety-guru-plants to keep us from racing through life’s parking lot so we don’t run over someone while aiming at the finish line, it can be way too easy to blame others or things for our internal and external ebbs and flows. I tend to think in run on sentences, sorry.
Taking control of my own destiny is a holy privilege and a divined ordination. Yet sometimes the road seems way too long to enjoy the journey. As a matter of fact, like my childhood vacation memories taken on a meager teacher’s salary, where cold cuts eaten in the back seat had to suffice because McDonald’s was too expensive, or where cedar wood souvenirs and trinket desires were just not in the budget, there were times I knew somehow I was getting short changed. I know, that pretty pathetic. My life really has been enormously good and blessed compared to so many others, but you know sometimes you can lose sight of those facts. And a misstep with words can take you there.
Over and over opportunities are given and squandered, but most of us live life with so much unforeseen grace that when life’s pages turn we really don’t grasp the gravity of His loving provision.
Each and every day I face the choice. Will I live life standing still, letting all things become relative to me, or will I ignite the afterburner of my passionate heart and imagination and rocket into orbit around a God who causes all things to be relative to Him and His purposes? Orbits around such a Being can produce such a whiplash affect, especially if you’re looking the wrong direction when you swing into the closest orbital trajectory; it’s easy to forget His gravity is what’s doing the pulling. Not chance.
As we orbit God, whether we realize it or not, His love and kindness are so gravitational, that they produce such a life momentum, we can find ourselves shot way out into a distant orbit; usually forgetting that it was actually His gravitational pull to Himself that gave us our initial speed and life.
If we ever dare to interrupt that course; we discover that we alone have the power to overcome a body in motion. Contrary to what Newton’s First Law tells us, we are more than just solid objects waiting for an outside force to act upon us. We are first and foremost spirit beings. We have souls that are empowered with free will. We’ve been stamped in His image and have been given the power of yes and no, up or down, right or left, black or white, life or death.
Please keep in mind; the next time I begin Blaming the Wicked for my state of being, I need someone to remind me of Psalm 73. I need time in the sanctuary of His presence. I need to accept the fact that by the loving grace of God, have been given keys to the Kingdom. I have been given the title deed to The Promise Land. There is a way set by God if I so choose to travel it.
It’s up to me. I am free to orbit knowing that He is my gravity.
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