Hanging on to Jesus
The following was written in February, 2012, seven months after my oldest son died.
Jacob‘s death pushed me right off the edge of a cliff. I kept grabbing at anything I could to stop my fall. You know that classic cartoon scene where the character falls off a cliff and there’s a tree conveniently growing out of the side of the cliff for him to grab onto? That was me... grabbing at the tree, grabbing at rocks, even grabbing at people’s hands trying to break my fall. But when Jacob died and I dropped off the cliff, it was not the tree that actually stopped my fall. It was Jesus who reached out and grabbed me. I was aware enough of His presence that I held out one hand to HIm. But my other hand was still flailing around, grabbing for anything that I could find to pull me to solid ground. Sometime later I stopped flailing. I reached up to Jesus with my other hand. All this time He has been waiting for me to just fix my eyes on Him and trust Him and Him alone to hold me up. All this time I’ve been willing to rest in Him in part, but just wanting something or someone else to hang on to, still feeling like I had to have someone else to help me up.
Now I am hanging over the edge of the cliff, looking straight at Jesus. I have given Him both of my hands and all of my attention. I’m just hanging there with nothing else to stand on, nothing else to grab. And I’m okay because I know He’s not going to let go. I don’t even know when He’s going to pull me back up to level ground where everyone else is. But I am totally depending on Him because there is simply nothing else I can do. It actually feels kind of peaceful here now. There’s no one else in sight on this particular cliff. It’s totally quiet, just me hanging on to Jesus, depending on Him alone. There’s no work on my part, just His. I know this is not true, but I’m so alone here with Jesus and He is so close to me that it almost feels like I have Him all to myself.
I think Jesus is going to pull me up eventually. He’s going to set me on level ground and He’s going to ask me to go forward, doing whatever He has called me to do. And, after this time of intimacy with Jesus, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for Him. The only thing I’m unclear on is, when He sets my feet back on level ground, how do I still live in this attitude of quietness and dependence? I want to keep the trust that I have in this moment when I am aware that dangling on the edge of a cliff with Jesus may be the sweetest spiritual time in my life.