Sometimes these moments are very good...the birth of a baby, a wedding...sometimes these two are closer than I would want! Other times they are not good moments...divorce, death, despair. In the former moments, people are in awe of the big changes a few moments can bring. In the latter, people are in despair of the big changes a few moments can bring.
"I can't believe how much I could love her!" a new parent exclaims. "I can't believe how much I loved him," says the grieving wife whose husband has just passed on. "I'm married!" exclaims a beaming new husband the moment the reality of the situation hits him. "I'm getting divorced," whispers a downtrodden wife the moment the reality of the situation hits her.
What under-girds all of this is a belief that life is normal and stable and nothing will ever change. But it is far time we learned that we are living on the edge, every moment of our life.
At every point in life, we are just moments away from achieving greatness and at every moment in life, we are mere seconds away from catastrophe. We have become fairly good at ignoring the cliff and fooling ourselves that life is really under our control.
This is not to say that our actions do not affect us, for they most certainly do. But the most prepared, the most righteous, the most noble person may find themselves facing the consequences of something beyond their control. Just as those who are falling out of control of life may find themselves blundering into a rewarding circumstance.
Is life, then, all chance? Is it just the luck of the draw? As the Apostle would say so, "May it never be so!"
We live our lives in the hands and before the sight of an all seeing, all powerful God, the Lord Almighty. There is nothing that happens that He is not aware of, and nothing that occurs of which He is not the ultimate Author. We never know what might come from His hand or from His agents. While we can discuss and debate the place of evil in the plan of God: one thing is certain: God is never surprised at what happens.
This means that when we are confronted by a sudden and tragic death....or a sudden end to a relationship...or any heartache that can come our way, God knew about it. He knew what was happening beneath the surface and understood what was about to go wrong. This is meant as a comfort for us, that in our darkest moments, God knows what is happening and we can go to Him about it.
But it also means that in our greatest success, God was laying the foundation and the bulwark. Our ingenuity was never quite as ingenious as we might think it to be (as good as it is). Our hard work definitely helped us along the way, but it was God who gave us success.
We live our lives before God and it is in those moments where everything changes, that we need to draw close to Him. We need to pray to Him and ask Him what He is doing in our lives. At these moments, we recognize the tenuousness that holds our lives together. It helps us to look at the edge and to wonder what's beyond it.
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