For Those Walking The Cliff's Edge {How To Balance In a Broken World}

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I don't have all the answers. In fact lately I've felt more full of questions than anything. An accident two weeks ago and news that broke over my heart like a crashing wave just a few days ago have left me heavy hearted.

I only know one thing and it is that I want to have the answers.

These words, as of late, have stuck in my throat just under the surface. I admit that there are times when I wonder if God is asleep at the wheel. I own that I have leveled my questions at God as vehemently as Job ever did and with less cause.

Because how do you live fully alive amidst the sorrow of death and a broken world? How do you believe in fullest life when it is slipping away for those around you?

  "Christians should not be optimists; we know too much about sin. We should also not be pessimists, for we know the living God." ~ Tim Keller

I have that feeling like when you speak up in a quiet room and all eyes turn on you. The eyes are expectant and waiting on me to answer with words that calm and mend the tear. I stumble through because I've never been terribly deft at saying the thing that is just right in the moment and sewing has never been my strong suit.

Time creeps and I listen to the Spirit's groan on my behalf and the words do come. They rise to the top and they aren't accusations against God, but rather they are an indictment on myself and my lack of faith and fearlessness as a child of God. From the end of ourselves we can see the beginning of God's hope and there are more than enough answers to fill eternity.

What do those in the valley need the most from those of us tenuously walking above them on the cliff's edge? Aren't we always just once false step away from the valley? The truth is yes, we are, and regardless of sounding trite I'll say it. Choose joy today because tomorrow is never promised.

Joy is a fountain of hope in a bone dry world. 

Your Bible study sister whose marriage is falling apart and all the best efforts for restoration have failed. The family with the diagnosis so unthinkable it leaves you gut punched in and feeling helpless.

They need you to live the joy today. Because if we don't live joy today then who is to believe us when we say that there is hope tomorrow? 

I don't mean that we feign happiness or put on brave faces and ignore reality.

Fires blaze, tempers flare and prodigals don't come home and there has to be a truth big enough to transcend the pit. Women go in for routine exams and come out cancer patients. Grandparents memories vaporize into thin air and we need a theology that is robust enough to carry the burden. A truth that ascends the mountain and shines light down to the valley, to the darkest places. 

Those trudging through the valley's depths need you to bring meals, cry with them, be angry with them,watch their kids, send texts, give until it hurts, be the Church, but the bigger picture being painted is that they need you to stop living small. 

If you believe a big Gospel then you can live a big life.

I was wide eyed and wrestled long into the night wondering what I could do to put pressure on some of the gushing wounds around me. I kept coming back to the same place- embrace life, hands open, palms up. This isn't a seize-the-day kind of philosophy it is a letting go of anything but God kind of living. It means holding the hand of God tighter and more intentionally than you ever dreamed.

That knot of fear you feel in your stomach is the way you know that something is worth doing. Love bigger. Fight for joy. A little bird told me that scared is the new brave. Which must mean if I'm shaking in my boots then courage abounds. Those in the pit need to know that joy still exists above them in the heavens.

Children die. The best among us fall to illness. My very own parents died. This world is broken off at it's root and the root that is God is beckoning us to find our life in Him. It is the only salvation in a world in desperate need of a rescue plan.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

1 Corinthians 2:2-5

The most miraculous thing in all the world is that He stooped to save us. The most miraculous thing is that we weren't all consumed in an instant by a holy God. We are alive and though death is nipping at our heels and we ache as it crashes up against our weak frames we can claim life in Christ.

Those aren't trite platitudes in the face of real life suffering. That isn't a verse-a-day kind of Christian devotion. It is robust Gospel living that is just that a Gospel for the living, a Gospel that lives in the face of death.

That is permission to walk fearless. That is a green light to go to say "Yes!" to God and everything He has given. Even if the whole world breaks and falls our foundation is sure and certain. Might our last words be a battle cry that death never ever wins for those who are in Christ. And let every word from now until then be sure and certain that God is for us.