 |
||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||
|
Leaping Into the Unknowable Future March 17, 2008 By
Martha J Jaynes “Hi, Mommy.”
The voice
was soft and small. It sounded like the three-year-old voice
I had heard so many years before, during the first weekend I
had left my daughter Larkin and her siblings with friends while
Scott and I chaperoned a youth event. But this was no little
girl talking; it was my 18-year-old, a young lady. I had left
her four hours ago in a dorm room. She was a freshman at college
and standing on the edge of something new and exciting, but
terrifying at the same time. I wanted to jump through the phone
lines and rescue her--bring her back home where she belonged!
I listened
to her relate her first few hours alone. She said she felt that
she would make friends and it would be okay, but that the first
night would be the hardest. We didn't get to talk for long
because there were activities planned all weekend that would
keep them busy and not thinking of home. When I hung up the
phone, I sat quietly for a while but no tears came. I was surprisingly
at ease. I felt a calm assurance that everything would be all
right. Larkin was where she was supposed to be. Just a Big Psych? As I sat
on the couch and reflected on what was happening in my life
and in the life of my daughter, I began to think of all the
decisions I make each day in my life that determine the course
my life will take--some, even without thinking, change my life
forever. I thought about the many people who stood where my
daughter and I now stand, on the brink of a new and different
way than we have ever known before, taking a leap. Taking a
blind leap of faith and hoping that although we can't see
it now, everything will be all right in the end. Did God mean
what He said or were my daughter and I victims to the biggest
fake-out in history? Moses and a Life of Faith I thought
for a moment of Moses. What did he feel as he stood poised on
the edge of a great body of water? Behind him was a land of
slavery and hardship. His people had toiled for years under
a harsh and cruel Pharaoh, never having enough to eat, never
getting enough sleep. Toiling and sweating with no relief. No
pay days, no weekends off, no insurance plan, no nice house,
no holidays, no vacations, just endless suffering and pain.
Three million
people stood behind him. Three million people were waiting for
his signal. They waited on him as he waited on God. Their enemies
were fast approaching; something had to be done and be done
fast. So in a
single act of faith, Moses stretched out his arm and pointed
his staff at the swirling waters of the Red Sea. A life of faith
had to be better than one of slavery. Did God mean what He said
or was this the biggest fraud in history? Mary--Stepping into the Unknown How about
Mary?
How did it feel to be so young and yet know that you were chosen
by God to change all of history? What do you say to angels when
they tell you? What thoughts went through her head as she knelt
on the cold bare floor of her home? She was young and alone.
What had just happened? Could what she saw and heard be true?
What if her parents found out? What about her fiancé? Would
he be okay with this? She knew
that this could mean public humiliation, expulsion from the
community, even death. She had seen it happen before--the public
outcry, broken parents, shamed young girl, all ending badly.
The best you could hope was a life of separation and hardship
on the wrong side of town. The worst . . . she didn't even
want to think about the worst. She had
said the words, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, let it
be to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). With a single
statement of faith, Mary stepped into the unknown. What could
she have been thinking? With a few simple words she had just
signed her own death warrant. Did God mean what He said or was
this the biggest scam in history? Knowing the End--God Will Be With Us It has been
many months since the first day I left my firstborn on the steps
of Bethany College. She had changed a lot before the first semester
was over. By faith, we stepped into the unknown when we agreed
to let her attend this institution of higher learning. By faith,
she stepped out and said, “This is what I want to do with my
life for the next four years.” Neither she nor I can know what
the future holds but we can know that God is with us.
We read the stories in the Bible from a different perspective. We know the end already. But the characters in those stories had no idea how their stories would end:
As in the Bible, So Now . . ? But how is that different from any other day? We all make those moves each day that will determine where our future will take us. The only constant in it all is God. It is God and God alone who knows where this road in life will take us:
And His
love, His everlasting love, will forever be the guiding light
that leads us home. Like the
heroes in the Word of God, on one day in one moment Larkin made
a decision. She made a decision that would change the course
of her life forever. None of us knows the end of the story.
Yet we jump.
We jump every day. We close our eyes. Raise our hearts toward
heaven. And leap. Like those who have gone before us, we leap.
Where will we land? God only knows. But His knowing is enough.
© 2008,
Martha Jaynes --------- Martha J Jaynes is a retail manager in the Kansas City area. She has left the shelter of “normal” Pentecost to introduce the Good Doctor to a lost and dying world. A questioner of all that is as it always was, it is her heart's desire to see the Truth taken out of the church and into the hearts of unbelievers. |
|||||||||
