2011 September | There Is A River

Archive for September, 2011

Book of Quotations: Home

I keep a book of quotations. It looks exactly like any other journal, but it’s for a different kind of journaling. Journaling with the words of other writers, if you will. Here I scribble down quotations from all kinds of books: poetry, theology, memoir, literary theory, fiction, you name it. I write down anything I want to remember.

Sometimes I use these quotations later, in my own writing or maybe just in conversation. But, it isn’t really about utility. It’s about beauty. Language can be so beautiful it stuns. However, I am generally reading so much, so quickly that I need a way to hold on to those beautiful bits that I just can’t bear to let wash down the stream of words, words, words.

In The Poetics of Space the French philosopher* Gaston Bachelard tells us that ”the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

That is pure poetry and reminds me, once again, that I will always find more truth in poetry (and myth, and story, and art) than in the dictionary.

Like many introverts, I imagine, I am happiest when in my own home. I also love the purely abstract idea of houses. As a middle-schooler, I wanted to be an interior designer. As an almost-college student, I considered architecture. Ultimately, my desire for fame and fortune led me to study literature. (For those perhaps unfamiliar with the current job market in the humanities, I should explain: that was a joke.)

After ten years of English lit. and babies, I finally did finish with school, and we left Chicago. I have missed my Chicago home for one year and six months. When I picture what it is that I miss, I see what Bachelard prompts me to call my “dreaming spot.” A soft green chair is huddled up against a corner window. A tall built-in bookshelf is just on the other side of the window, and through the glass there are rooftops with one-hundred year old chimneys and treetops that shift from bare, to bright green, to rich green, to shades of fire, and back again.

When I leave this Florida house, I am sure that I will miss the big bay window that shelters my writing desk. I still have the soft, green chair, but I no longer spend much time there. I prefer the hard-backed desk chair, here by the window, where I can see vegetable beds, ripening citrus, water, and (when I’m lucky) river otters. Right now, this is my spot for dreaming.

For me, one of the saddest and most troubling verses in the Bible is Matthew 8:20 where Jesus tells us, “‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” To follow Jesus, is to say, “Lord, I will make my home in you.”

But we have also been given a promise. In John 14:2 Jesus says, “’In my Father’s house are many rooms . . . I am going there to prepare a place for you.’”

I love houses, mine (wherever it happens to be) most of all. I simply cannot imagine having no place (let alone a cozy, book-filled place) to lay my head. And so I stumble upon yet one more difficult, beautiful paradox: my desire for Home is God-given and good, but this fact gives me no right to hold my house in a possessive, white-knuckled grip.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’”

(Matthew 16: 24-25)

*Lest anyone formulate an unduly high regard for my intellectual habits, I must admit that I do not actually spend my days reading French philosophy. I encountered this quotation in the travel section of my Sunday New York Times. Poetry can find us in the most surprising places.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 2 Comments

Bless Her Heart

I can still hear my paternal grandmother: “Bless her heart,” she would say. It was one of those Southern-isms that fascinated me as a kid. I may have been growing up in Texas, but my own San Francisco-born mother never said, “Bless her heart.” She never said, “over yonder” or “back forty.” Neither did she serve biscuits every morning or insist on only drinking Dr. Pepper that had been bottled in Dublin, Texas (still the only Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup). But Grandmother did.

I’ve been hearing her voice because I read an interview in Southern Living magazine. This country singer mentioned that her favorite thing about the South is women who say “Bless her heart.” Personally, my favorite thing about living in the South is being able to justify a subscription to Southern Living magazine. It’s good for me to remember this, because the list of things I do not like about living in the South is long (Curious? My top three are heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.).

Though I miss Chicago desperately, I do love Southern Living. It reminds me to look past the strip malls and remember that this place really is unique. And I love women who say “bless her heart.”

Regretfully, these three little words do conjure a common stereotype of Southern women. You know, sugar-sweet on the outside but with a deep vein of mean underneath. As in, “Poor thing looks like she got dressed in the dark, bless her heart.”

Yes, I’ve heard comments like this one (though never, ever from Grandmother), but, for the most part, “Bless her heart” isn’t used to sugar-coat the ugly.

Rather, it’s always sounded to me like a precious way of viewing other people. When we remark upon someone’s trouble, pain, or folly with a “bless her heart,” we are emphasizing that which is child-like in the other. Bless her heart (‘cause she can’t really help it). Bless her heart (‘cause we’ve all been there.)

At its worst, “bless her heart,” is infantilizing. At its best, it reminds us that we are all unfinished works-in-progress, generally trying (and frequently failing) to do our best.

To say “bless her heart,” is to notice what’s gone wrong but then . . . to extend a little grace.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 7 Comments

A Poem for Your Monday

This comes from one of my favorite poets, the Irish writer Eavan Boland.

Reading it again this morning, I remember that myths are some of the truest stories we tell. The myth of Persephone is not merely a way of explaining the change of seasons before our age of scientific discovery. More than this, it is a story of loss and restoration. This poem reminds me that I have been Persephone. It also reminds me that my oldest child is swiftly becoming Persephone. I say, with Boland, that I will not deny her her own unique life story, though no good story is without pain.

The Pomegranate

The only legend I have ever loved is

The story of a daughter lost in hell.

And found and rescued there.

Love and blackmail are the gist of it.

Ceres and Persephone the names.

And the best thing about the legend is

I can enter it anywhere. And have.

As a child in exile in

A city of fogs and strange consonants,

I read it first and at first I was

An exiled child in the crackling dusk of

The underworld, the stars blighted. Later

I walked out in a summer twilight

Searching for my daughter at bedtime.

When she came running I was ready

To make any bargain to keep her.

I carried her back past whitebeams.

And wasps and honey-scented buddleias.

But I was Ceres then and I knew

Winter was in store for every leaf

On every tree on that road.

Was inescapable for each one we passed.

And for me.

It is winter

And the stars are hidden.

I climb the stairs and stand where I can see

My child asleep beside her teen magazines,

Her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.

The pomegranate! How did I forget it?

She could have come home and been safe

And ended the story and all

Our heartbroken searching but she reached

Out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.

She put out her hand and pulled down

The French sound for apple and

The noise of stone and the proof

That even in the place of death,

At the heart of legend, in the midst

Of rocks full of unshed tears

Ready to be diamonds by the time

The story was told, a child can be

Hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.

The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.

The suburb has cars and cable television.

The veiled stars are above ground.

It is another world. But what else

Can a mother give her daughter but such

Beautiful rifts in time?

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

The legend must be hers as well as mine.

She will enter it. As I have.

She will wake up. She will hold

The papery, flushed skin in her hand.

And to her lips. I will say nothing.

– Eavan Boland

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: No Comments

In Praise of Weakness

She leaned forward, looked right into my eyes, and said, “You’re a good mother, aren’t you?”

Yes, she really did. My jaw dropped a little, and I said nothing but “Ummm.” Then I watched those inarticulate sounds hang there in the air between us.

Fortunately, she was a talker, and she barreled right ahead, “Well, of course you are, but my own mother now . . .” and she was off, telling me her life story. We were strangers making small talk in a Starbucks, though our talk (or hers, at least) quickly ballooned.

At least a decade older than me, she was beautiful. Like a model for hip, expensive yoga-wear. She was also honest. I heard all about her many failed relationships, failures for which she was quick to accept responsibility (though not without some wickedly funny anecdotes about her exes). And when it came to her children, she was confident. She had always, she was sure, been an excellent mother. Nothing like the alcoholic who had raised her.

Our conversation took place more than a year ago, but I still marvel at the certainty with which she announced: “I am a good mother.” Not “good enough” (to use the psychoanalytic catchphrase I learned in graduate school) but truly, thoroughly good.

In the radiance cast by her lovely, shiny blonde hair, my own self-doubt emerged as if spotlighted. For that’s exactly what her bold question had done: shined a light on my weakness.

I don’t think that I will ever say with confidence or certainty that I am a good mother. I love my kids. I love being a mother (though I don’t always like it). And I’ll even admit that if you lined up a cross section of the world’s mothers, I might show up somewhere near the top, at least according to superficial, measurable factors (I kiss them, I say “I love you,” I feed them organic as much as possible, I make them brush their teeth).

For whatever reason, I tend not to focus on the things I do well. Instead, I see the failures: from lost tempers and angry threats to my consistent refusal to play Legos with my son (I’m just not good at that. Why don’t you wait till Daddy’s home?).

Over the years (well, eight years, to be exact), I’ve made peace with my weakness. I cannot stand up boldly to claim the title “good mother,” but today I’m okay with that.

Mothering is now so much less about me and so much more about Grace. The more impossible I find this role, the more room there is for God (and for His presence, His love, His power, His many good gifts).

As my friend Courtenay recently told me, all that hard, cannot-possibly-get-it-done, certainly cannot-do-it-well stuff on your horizon? Well, that’s what grace is for.

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

(2 Corinthians 12:8-10)

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 13 Comments

It’s About Money, Except When It Isn’t

I’ve always had a tendency to let the mail pile up unopened (which means that we have realized, on more than one occasion, that we’re driving a car that may no longer be insured).

We put systems in place. For instance, a basket for recycling junk mail sits by the front door just beneath a tray for bills. I vow to do a better job, but I never quite keep up with the flurry of paper.

One particular unopened letter had been troubling me for weeks. The return address said Compassion, and “a message from your sponsored child!” was splashed across the envelope. I knew as soon as I pulled it from the mailbox that it was a note from our new Compassion child (I picked him from the lineup because he reminded me of my middle boy). He isn’t the only child we sponsor, so I knew the drill. I would need to write a letter introducing him to our family, and I remembered that it was customary to include a family photo.

It’s the photo’s fault. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.

As soon as I open this letter, I told myself, then I’ll have to add “take and print a family photo” to my to-do list. I felt tired just considering my to-do list, yet my perfectionism wouldn’t let me send a year-old photograph (because our baby boy has changed so much).

And so, I let the letter sit.

I kept spotting it. I noticed it every time I added a few more bills to the now-teetering pile in the tray. The guilt grew with the pile, but I couldn’t get past the need for a photo.

Until yesterday.

I shook my perfectionist, procrastinating self and opened the letter. Immediately, I noticed a small box with the prompt “Please pray for my family.” Within that square were these dictated words: “Please pray that my father finds a job and stops drinking.”

I was devastated. My chest hurt.

A heart-cry in a handful of words: how could I have let it sit unread?

Adding another Compassion child to our monthly giving was a financial stretch for us. However, I’ve found that opening my eyes just a little bit to the rest of the world makes it much harder to justify the ease with which I buy books. Or new boots for my daughter. Or another weekly dance class.

It’s about money. God has his eye on the poor, and I see them too. We both know that He’s given American Christians more than enough to wipe out mountains of misery, if only we would share what has never been ours to begin with.

Yet, believing it was just about money made it easier to leave that letter lying on the tray. Now I know: it’s about money (I say I care about the poor, so I better put my money where my mouth is), and it’s about so much more.

It’s about a small boy. One precious life. Only five years old, and yet he knows things that my own kids have never even imagined. I’m still trying to figure out how to share this prayer request with them. I don’t think that they have ever even heard the word drunk. Let alone seen it.

But this boy . . . oh how my heart aches when I consider what he has seen. What he is seeing even now as I type.

So, I’ll keep writing the checks. But now my checks go out dripping with prayer. Simple, nearly wordless prayers:

Jesus, Carlos, Jesus, Carlos’s daddy, Jesus, Carlos’s mommy, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 4 Comments

A Poem (And a Pretty Picture) for Your Monday

The muscles in my legs have been achy and sore for two days. No, I didn’t go jogging (horror!). I spent most of Saturday rearranging my books, and it seems I vastly underestimated the after-effects of shuffling books from shelves to floor and back to different shelves.

The big book shuffle was prompted by a single new bookcase. It arrived on Friday, packed in one slender yet unbelievably heavy box. On Saturday morning the three boys tackled it with their respective hammers (plastic for the two-year-old, which pleased him not at all).

Within half an hour I was standing in front of one of the loveliest sights I can imagine: pristine, empty bookshelves.

They didn’t stay empty long. I gathered up the piles of books which have quietly accumulated in the corners of my house, and, after much dusting and a thorough rearranging, discovered that I should have ordered two new bookcases.

No matter. I can’t think of a better way to spend a cloudy, drizzly Saturday than handling (and remembering) each of my books as I slide them into place.

It was only as I carried my poetry collection from family room built-ins to dining room shelves that my pleasure dimmed. I haven’t reached for any of these books in such a long time (not since my last Intro. to Lit. class), and I felt suddenly sad to think of so much treasure sitting untouched, collecting dust.

I had the idea, then, to share some of these poems here on my blog. I grant you, it’s very self-indulgent. But isn’t blogging always that, to some extent?

The thing I’ve long loved most about teaching is the simple act of sharing beautiful things. I’ve missed that.

So, without further ado, a poem for you (inspired by last week’s post on the magic of mirrors):

Miracle Glass Co.

Heavy mirror carried

Across the street,

I bow to you

And to everything that appears in you,

Momentarily

And never again the same way:

This street with its pink sky,

Row of gray tenements,

A lone dog,

Children on rollerskates,

Woman buying flowers,

Someone looking lost.

In you, mirror framed in gold

And carried across the street

By someone I can’t even see,

To whom, too, I bow.

- Charles Simic

This is a perfect ode, in my opinion, for kicking off plans to reacquaint myself with the poetry on my shelves. It reminds me that creating art is often as simple as reframing the everyday (as my sister’s photograph moves us to see peeling paint with new eyes).

Within the gold frame of a poem, the ordinary is transformed. Simic is right. It is a miracle.

Blowing the dust off of a poem and reading it, we bow to the vision it offers, we bow to its maker, the poet, and we remember our own maker, who created us to create.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 9 Comments

Book of Quotations: Moonlight and the Memory of Pain

The purple fabric cover of my book of quotations has caught my eye this morning. Cracking its cover and skimming its pages, I rediscover this gem from George MacDonald.

In his classic fantasy Phantastes, first published in 1858, he writes words worth remembering:

” . . . I went on my silent path beneath a round silvery moon. And a pale moon looked up from the floor of the great blue cave that lay in the abysmal silence beneath. Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality? – not so grand or strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. . . . In whatever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may be sure, that this feeling is no cheat; for there is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning. Even the memories of past pain are beautiful; and past delights, though beheld only through clefts in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy Land. . . . The moon . . . is the lovelier memory or reflex of the down-gone sun, the joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding night . . . .”

What do you see in the photo above?

Because we live in a world which privileges cold, hard facts, I imagine that each of us would claim to see only a reflection. The camera isn’t showing us the real things, the actual palm trees and beach balls.

I begin to wonder: is the reflection, the mirror image, actually less real? Less true?

I flip through the pages of an old photo album. I remember the pain and pleasure of those days, and I discover that MacDonald is right, those memories, the good and bad, are glossed with loveliness. Should I distrust this loveliness? Should I insist that the distance of years has distorted reality?

Perhaps the haze of beauty which covers my memories reveals the truth about my life in a way that immediate, lived experience cannot. Yes, pain is real and terrible, but it may be that in the mirror reflection of memory we can glimpse something important that is beyond our comprehension in the moment.

When pain is part of a good and beautiful story it can be transformed. It can become moonlight.

Yes, I love the direct, unmediated happiness of sunshine. Still, I am grateful for the subtle beauty and the reflected glory that belong only to moonlight.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 1 Comment

The Sweet Sound of “New”

I slumped down at my writing desk one recent morning, and this phrase floated up to the top of my mind: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

I was feeling a little depressed, a little overwhelmed, and Solomon’s words came unbidden to justify my dark mood.

For me, it was nothing more serious than hot weather, kids fighting (again), and dirt tracked all over my just-mopped floors. Some days it only takes that little bit and we are carrying the burdens of the world: in an instant my eyes roam from the dirt, sweat, and tears in my own house to the global orphan crisis, drought in Texas, famine in Africa (again!).

Why is my life such a mess? Why is the world such a mess?

Supposedly, we Christ-followers are the bearers of “Good News” (just search the Bible for the phrase “good news”: it comes up a lot). But what can we possibly have to say to those suffering amidst the ever-present darkness of this world?

As a child, growing up in the church, I heard a lot about good news. Maybe the message was simplistic or maybe I was only able to understand a simple message, but I believed then that the good news was all about heaven. The good news, then, was that Jesus made a way for us to go to heaven when we die. That seemed like pretty good news to me, which is strange because I was a lot farther from death than I am now. Today, thirty years closer to my own end, that news doesn’t seem nearly good enough.

You and I and our neighbors on this planet? We need good news now. We need good news for today.

Solomon’s words take me there. He writes, “Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’?” (Ecclesiastes 1:10). I’m not sure, I can’t really answer his question, but then I remember these words in Isaiah: “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43: 19).

God is doing something new. In fact, He’s been working at it for thousands of years. The Old Testament whispers it, and Jesus embodies it. New life. New creation. New covenant. New heaven. New earth.

God is making all things new (Revelation 21: 5).

I don’t know exactly what that means. But I feel something good deep down in my bones when I hear the word new. New, new, new. All is being made new.

Was there ever a more hopeful, beautiful word than “new”?

In me, in you, and in this gorgeous, broken-down world, God is doing a new thing. Look closely. Do you not perceive it?

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 1 Comment

Caught in Mid-Air on 9/11

The two of us. Pre-digital camera. Pre-parenthood. (Just barely) pre-9/11.

I still have the airfare ticket stub marked September 11, 2001. Ten years ago, we didn’t use e-tickets.

Also, there were no smartphones. This partially explains why it isn’t the images of destruction that have stuck with me (images we didn’t get a good look at for nearly a week). It’s the voice of our pilot.

We had just begun our flight from Shannon airport in the west of Ireland home to Chicago, when a deadly-serious voice sounded over the speakers: “Something terrible has happened,” it said. “The FAA has closed all airspace, and we will not be continuing this flight.”

Our plane was grounded in Dublin, a city we hadn’t planned to visit during this, our first, trip to Ireland. Jonathan and I didn’t say anything while we sat on that plane waiting to disembark and collect our luggage packed with dirty laundry. We only looked at each other. Later, we discovered that the image in our minds had been the same: mushroom cloud.

Somehow the actual story was harder to believe. An Irishman with a working cellphone began hearing stories, and they spread quickly from row to row. Attacks? On New York City? Washington D.C.? We shook our heads, said we didn’t believe it.

A few hours later, the airport employee helping me find accommodations in Dublin said it was like something out of a disaster movie. That’s when I understood.

Jonathan left me with the luggage and went searching for a television. He found one at the airport pub. Walking back in my direction, he looked stunned.

I could only pray, “Lord, have mercy.”

For a week, we wandered around the city, feeling as if we might never get home. We guarded our torn ticket stubs as if they were a king’s ransom. We saw confused looks every time we handed them over to another ticketing agent. It was hard for them to understand that when the towers fell we’d been caught in mid-air.

Some small, rational part of our brains kept repeating that if only we knew when we’d be going home we could enjoy this unexpected vacation in Dublin. But we were counting pennies, dodging raindrops, and washing a suitcase full of clothes at the laundromat. It didn’t feel like vacation.

While on vacation we had spent our carefully saved dollars on bed and breakfasts that served Irish porridge with just-picked blackberries. In Dublin, we had a small lumpy bed and were served canned beans on toast. Want to make an American feel wretchedly homesick? Just serve her instant coffee and canned beans on toast.

The world had shifted on its axis, we understood that unimaginable evil could rear its head at any time and in any place, but we couldn’t comfort ourselves with the well-loved and familiar. The flags at half-staff were Irish ones.

After several days in Dublin, we were promised a flight home, but we would need to get back to Shannon airport. We said goodbye to the lumpy bed and took an all-day bus that brought us back across the country, to the place where we had started.

When international airspace reopened, we were there, again, at Shannon airport. They had no record of our names, and we had only our tattered ticket stubs.

We spent one night in the home of a family preparing for their daughter’s wedding. Two stranded German tourists were across the hall from us. The wife said not to worry, we were no bother at all, and she cooked us a big fried breakfast. The husband drove us back to the airport for another try.

At the airport again, we sat on the floor and listened as Aer Lingus employees filled up a plane to Chicago with names called out one by one. When there was exactly one seat left, they called my name. I said that I wouldn’t get on any plane without my husband.

We were wondering whether we could interrupt the wedding weekend with one more night’s stay, when a woman in an official green uniform came running up and shouting, “Does anyone want to go to Baltimore?” We raised our hands. Then, following our guide, we ran.

We also prayed, “God let the doors still be open.”

We weren’t headed home, but it was close enough.

We remembered a friend who lived near D.C. Jonathan, miraculously, remembered his phone number. He picked us up, drove us to his own home, gave us a beautiful, not-at-all lumpy bed.

We managed to find a tiny, out-of-the-way rental car business with one car still on its lot. We took it. Twelve hours later, and one week after 9/11, we slept in our own bed.

“God is our refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way

and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam

and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

The holy place where the most High dwells.”

(Psalm 46: 1-4)

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 7 Comments

To Make a Free Fall of Faith

I spent most of this Labor Day weekend sitting by the pool and feeling the spray of splash after splash after splash. My children don’t swim so much as hurl themselves repeatedly into the water. Even the two-year-old, with a grip on his inner tube that looks entirely too casual to me, gets in on the action. Run . . . jump . . . Splash! Repeat.

I tried it once or twice myself, but even that small drop from side of pool to bottom of pool makes my stomach flutter. Once upon a time, I could jump from the 7 meter diving platform for fun after swim practice. Once upon a time, I pretended to like the free-fall rides at the amusement park.

I have nothing left to prove. I would rather avoid stomach flutters. And so I generally ease my body into the pool one concrete step at a time.

But if a bodily free fall is something I now avoid, I find myself pursuing spiritual free falls with much more regularity. They don’t make my stomach flutter – only my heart.

I don’t think you will find the phrase “free fall” in the Bible, but it seems to me the best way to describe the experience of following God into unknown terrain. To hear His voice calling, to move in His direction . . . well, it often feels like falling.

There we are – in midair – and it is not at all clear that we will be caught, that we have in fact heard rightly, that we will not fall all the way to the bottom of an empty post-Labor Day swimming pool.

I could tell you that He never lets us hit bottom. That our free fall of faith is rewarded every time. But I’m not sure if it always looks like that. Or if it always feels like that.

Sometimes we might just find ourselves at the bottom of the pool, picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of it all. Asking, “Was I wrong to jump?”

Occasionally, we are tested like Abraham, and we are privileged to see, without a doubt, that we have aced the test. Abraham knew that he would have sacrificed his son. God knew it too. Abraham passed the test and was rewarded with God’s provision and with a faith that had been refined by fire.

Abraham made the leap. He landed with both feet on the ground and eyes that had witnessed God’s goodness and glory.

Yes, God tests us, we have read, in order to know what is in our hearts (Deuteronomy 8:2). But even if we find ourselves heart-bruised at the bottom of the pool, we are given this good thing: we have seen our own souls in flight.

Whether we call it falling or flying, it is good to know what we are made of. It is good to know that even the least thrill-seeking among us are capable of leaping after Him.

“. . . acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you . . .” (I Chronicles 28:9).

I hope my kids keep jumping. It isn’t safe, but I’m convinced that it’s the only way to live.

Author name:: Christie Purifoy
Discussion:: 1 Comment