ARISING FROM THE DUSTS

In moments like this, when failure sneaks in and plots to topple me from my poise, trying to push me out of my composure, I may not know how best to deal with it but well, I somehow have to find some strength to keep me moving ahead, for that is the only thing that should ultimately last. The pain may tally for a while but then I have to somehow find strength to keep myself going on until this over coz as for me, I am not yet over. I fight hard and at times I fall hard. It is hurting not to only fall but to also be down on the ground without knowing what leg to lift first. That is hard. That is what is more hurting than the bruises, when you know there is hope, but even so, you know not when this hope will come to your rescue.  Being down on the ground strains my hopes to the limit. These are the times when I question the great hope that indwells within me. Why is this so? Why does it have to happen to me? Why am I the only one on the ground around here? The way these good people look at me, analyze my situation giving me a hopeless look of ‘you will contaminate me if I help you up you know’ kind of look reminds me of the story of the poor traveler on his way to the town of Jericho. Big ups to the good Samaritan who went against the odds of traditions and religiosity to lift a man unknown to him off from the dusts of the Jericho highway on to the strong back of his well natured donkey that he may ride on it as he himself walks the rest of the way to town.

The time I have to spend on the ground waiting for help! Hope, my worthy companion, is still loud enough to keep me reminded that his cousin, the four letter word- HELP is on the way, is hard and excruciating. This is the time I give up on myself and on any strength that remaining and I start to mumble a prayer of last resort. I hastily reach out into the depths of the pages of my heart the unwritten will as in a manner to suggest that this is the code embedded and programmed to ring an alarm bell at such a time as this. Here I remember that which is precious to me, that which I treasure and has been living for, the thought that this is the end of it all doesn’t come in sweet and it makes me want to stand and let someone know that I believe it is not yet over! As I reach out into the depth of my heart, I am almost sure that I can stand on my own, that I can manage it. I have the will. There is the power.  The passion reverberates. There’s urgency of need. Yes. I can do it. As though it is the last thing I will ever do. Filled with the memories of the many times I have done it in the past, I move the right limb. Numb, I drag. My spirit is on its way up. I’m psyched. I’m up I’m up. The other limb won’t move. Resilience takes over and I push hard only for my flesh to give way, falls back to where it had merely lifted from. As a set of dominoes, the heart comes down, the souls lays on it, this is way too much for the mind, and it is way too much! To cover and protect the rest of my being, the spirit of my being crowns on top of it all and down I lay stateless.

So much comes to mind when I am down here.  Some part of me want to go through all the sins I have done and repented if only to ask for a second helping in forgiveness. There is no time to allow any one thought to linger for long in my mind. I flush through life from the earliest of my memories, a smile here, and wish of ‘it could have been done better than so and so on and so off.’ Then comes in the big question, has it been worth that I had this life being granted me? Some faint smile on the dusty face says it all, if this were the end; I have done it all, and done it the best I knew how. I have lived it and I have loved it and even when I am down here, I start to feel a love for this life I am living. I know given a chance, I will live on. I will make a number of more mistakes, I will plant some smiles on the faces of the lowly and the mighty and I know. Yes, I will make more success in the life I have to move on with doing great exploits as life goes on. At this point in the lowly state, at the other end of what we call hope, I begin to understand the gospel of hope, that hope is not hope because I am down and seeking to be encouraged but that hope is hope of all ages.  Thus, hope keeps me living today with a perspective that there is the today that I am living but then also a tomorrow that I will also live to see. It is then that I realize that hope is not bounded to today or to tomorrow but rather it is hope that projects into the eternal life. And yes, it’s because He lives…..

 because he apportions grace in sufficient measure....