Thursday, May 29, 2008

Just For Now

Just for now, I will sit on the current thoughts that are keeping me up at night. Not out of fear or embarrassment. Not out of uncertainty. But out of the desire to not write anything that would be inaccurate. I can't even write, really, what I feel. Because I just don't know exactly what that is. Troubled. Concerned. Bothered. Shaken. Those would be a place to start. For now, I'll move on. I'll come back, I promise, but not right now.

For now, I'm moving on to chapter five. I'm taking the following text from pages 75 and 76.

"God didn't desire robots in the garden that oculdn't freely choose to love and obey Him, so out of a myriad of trees, one was placed in the midst of the garden with the following command, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day" (Gen. 2: 16-17, TEV). The death He spoke of wasn't physical death, for Adam didn't experience physical death until years afterward (also a result from his disobedience). Instead, the Lord showed man he would be cut off from the life of God and take on the nature of Lucifer, which is death."

Seperation from God. I can imagine nothing, nothing more painful. There is nothing I fear, nothing I dread, more than the notion of anybody I love being separated from God. In my life, I've despaired. I'm not talking about sorrow, nor am I referring to tears, pain, agony, or loneliness that results from life. I'm talking about true despair. The sort that isolates a person from everyone they know. The kind that consumes your conciousness. The weight, the darkness, that settles on one's shoulders whether they are asleep or awake. The inescapable unbearable pain. That which makes a person choose to end their own life. I was blessed. Fortunate. A servant of God was there for me. Someone cared. And someone, because of the grace of God on their life, was able to lift me up. But even then, even when I sat on the edge of my bed staring at a bottle of alcohol and a pile of pills, I was not truly separated from God. How do I know? Because something deep, deep inside prevented me from following through. I can guarantee it wasn't my own "will to live." It was God. I didn't have to not do it - I could have chosen to continue that path, but I didn't. (I'd like to say, right here and now, that this blog is not, has never been, and never will be about suicide or people who've attempted (or succeeded) it). Today, and every day, I am thankful for His intervention.

But part of what moves me, what pushes me to put one foot down in front of the other and keep running this race, is that He didn't save me just for me. To clarify: Yes. Salvation is His gift. It is for me. Only I can receive it for myself, and I can only receive it for myself. But I'm not saved just so me, myself and I can go to heaven and have pie in the sky, by and by. I'm saved to be with God. Forever. And I've got time on this earth in which to make my decision. I've got time to tell others. And I've got time to get to know God - just a little. Here, I can't truly know Him as He knows me. That's beyond my comprehension. But heaven is just a place. Granted, the most extraordinary, beautiful place ever created, but a place all the same. The part that makes heaven worth spending an eternity in is God. Himself. How does a person even begin to fathom that? How can a place hold God? How does He fit?

For tonight, that's all I'll write. That which is heavy in my heart is still heavy. But not ready to come out yet.

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