Am I Alive?

Photo Note: The cemetery in which our first daughter, Allison, is buried, and the beautiful tree, which God makes live.

I hope that my choice of green today is sufficiently readable for my 80-year-old mother, who asked me to make my font choice "dark enough to read!" (Like it, Mom?) I love symbolism of various types, and colors are just one ideal expression in which I find wonderful, rich nuances of reality.

Green grows. Green breathes. Green beautifies. And green lives. As a Christian, I am mindful daily of my life in Christ, and the way in which God's faithful presence lifts me "from the depths" and sets my feet on high places. But there is a deadening step which encumbers the unsuspecting moment or hour through which I pass, and it is truly frightful. Am I really alive? Or am I merely appeased with a mirage of what I believe exists, and which I will never attain?

I remember my early days as a new believer in Christ, and the simple joy which flourished in a heart which barely knew pain. Praise and worship deeply rooted in my personality then, I would often walk around my college campus singing at all times and in all places - from inside the elevators (interesting acoustics in there!) to my own private "stage" in a large function room, late at night. When you still have most of your life ahead of you, vast and near limitless in its scope, it is quite easy to pray and praise with an unyielding hope.

King Solomon's words ring true, that there is "nothing new under the sun." Such an odd sentence, I always thought, but I find comfort in its quality of linking me to God-fearing men and women who lived many hundreds of years ago. All of us have experienced times of trial and testing, whether with autism, or another challenge - and we find the measure of who we are through the manner in which we traverse them. If we are not fully alive, is the fault that of life itself, or of our dulled version of it? Is our life played out meagerly by rogue, amateur stage hands or by maleable, nascent artists coached by Life Himself? How much greater would be our brilliance if we would but fruitfully yield to the God whose life beats palpably in an through us?

This hapless jumble of meanderings has taken me a week to posit, without much apparent fruit from my efforts! But there is one thing that is gradually clarified, as cobwebs are brushed away from the mental tumult. That is the need, in this process of finding this "real" life we all seek, to come to know again the "The way, The truth, and The life" who is Messiah. The Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, Y'shua haMeschiach. So lying in repose in this dark, lifeless moment, lacking in beauty and laden with repression of soul and strength, I confess I am now caught. It's time to seek the Lord again, and find my life anew, buried and risen with His.

I am alive!

Elise