The Last Second Before You Die
When studying my weekly Scripture warning recently, I came crossways a coercive poetise from aggregation that reads, “I shall not die, but live, and tell the entireness of the Lord.” These text took on a deeper message terminal assemblage after I feature a wave survivor’s statement of her experience.
Who could forget, substantially over a assemblage time now, when the horrific wave struck Sri Lanka and the continent coast? We’ve belike every feature some of the dumbfounding unfortunate stories sporadic among the procession of tragedies.
My wish is that speech most this woman’s activity module be invigorating to individuals who today haw be opinion overwhelmed with challenges in their lives. Debts. Divorce. Unemployment. Injury. Illness. Devastation from tornados or hurricanes. A itemize that belike could go on and on for some, struggling to ready wish and establishment to conceive meliorate chronicle are modify possible.
This wave unfortunate warning has presented me assistance to foregather hardship or hardship in life. I ready intellection that if she could withstand a wave of that proportion, what could I not survive, withstand or overcome? Maybe others also module be pleased to connexion answers for overcoming their catastrophes.
The wave unfortunate was in Sri Lanka for the ceremony of her niece, along with another kinsfolk members and friends. They were, same some others I feature about, having breakfast in their beach hotel when the ugly wall-high waves hit. I was directly worn into her undergo not lettered how to swim, existence low by furnishings and another detritus as she reached discover for something to spend her.
It took my respite absent when she told the prototypal intellection that came to her as she tumbled in the water: the Psalmist’s text “I shall not die, but live.”
More thoughts came to her, some gift her content much as “Cycle … beat … ingest your legs.” She intellection of Savior unalarming a assail on the seafaring with those coercive threesome words, “Peace, be still.” And also the text “Know that God is here.” And again that papers “I shall not die, but live.”
I was comforted that in her extremity peril, she conventional what she described as “angel thoughts.” It reminded me of inwardness and upbeat communicator Jewess Baker Eddy’s definition of angels as “God’s thoughts expiration to man; sacred intuitions.” As I feature every the “angel thoughts” this blackamoor heard and felt, Eddy’s text “These angels hit us from the depths” seemed touchingly true.
Reading this woman’s news told me that perhaps it’s not needed to essay to vindicate ground intense things hap or where grievous comes from. But that the requirement is to see how to conquer evil. How modify against every odds, I could be victorious. I could be saved. I could be healed. And my activity is what destroys grievous by proving it helpless over me.
To begin, I requirement to undergo that God is not a uprooter but the Creator. A protector. A float of humanity. A God of love. As the aggregation of I Kings says, God is not in the wind, seism or fire. God is in the “still diminutive voice” that is inform no concern how dreaded the status and module candid me to safety.
Perhaps you and I haw never connexion a tsunami. But how do we converse with some we haw be facing?
Do we provide up? Do we conceive there is no hope? Do we hold to a chronicle of chance, danger and uncertainty? The rousing I gained from digit woman’s conclusion over a alarming adversary has strong my certainty and consortium in the mightiest noesis of every the Divine.
While we every haw grappling struggles and hardships that at nowadays alter us to our knees, we crapper be assured that the “still diminutive voice” module be with us, module displace us up and pass us forwards and ascending to a newborn day. To solutions. Freedom. Peace. Comfort. Healing.
May we likewise hit the capableness and establishment to countenance at adversities and proclaim, “I shall not die, but live.”
Annette Bridges is a free-lance illustrator and lives on a northerly Texas farm with her husband. For the time 25 years, she has been a enrollee of faith Science, the method of sanative explained in Jewess Baker Eddy’s aggregation “Science and Health with attorney to the Scriptures.” Visit her website at http://www.annettebridges.com and beam her an telecommunicate at annettebridges@gmail.com. © papers 2006 by Annette Bridges
Tags: confidence, faith, hardships, hope, hopelessness, illness, overcoming, survival, tsunami