I’ve been thinking about that cross I found last Sunday.
All week—I can’t stop thinking about it.
As I told someone earlier this week, there are times in our lives when God is subtle and there are times like last Sunday when He is so real, He might as well be standing there right in front of me.
Though I still can’t remember why I asked my mom to buy me that cross when I was in third grade, I do remember that year was special to me for another reason.
It was that year that I first remember feeling the presence of God.
It was that year that He became real to me.
I had always believed in Him I think in the same way that I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, except they had more credibility. There was always money under the pillow and presents under the tree.
But when I was eight-years-old, something clicked inside of me and suddenly God became real, as real as my parents, my friends, maybe even more real. He was always present.
He was the sunrise.
Some time after that I asked my mom to buy me that cross.
Years pass and then last Sunday, the cross reappears—like that—without me looking for it, it’s there.
Why?
Why now?
I’ve been having a hard time lately. The last seven months have been amazing and joy-filled, beyond imagination. I’ve agreed to go on this journey with God even though the destination seems a little hazy and the path itself sometimes hidden.
But still I follow.
Lately, though, I’ve started to panic a little.
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
It’s like when I was teenager and learning how to swim, I never strayed more than an arm’s length from the edge of the pool.
But now God has dropped me in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. He asks me to trust Him.
And I want to trust, but I’m so scared.
I’m frightened even as I know that I can’t and won’t turn back now.
“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for,” the poem says (author unknown).
We are not meant to be safe. We are meant to grow and change. We are explorers and the journey is sometimes joyous and sometimes painful as we become who God intends us to be.
Finding that cross the other day, reminded me that I have known God a long time, but He has known me infinitely longer. Whether or not I knew it at the time, asking my mom to buy me that cross was my way of committing myself to the journey.
Finding that cross reminded me that I do not take the journey alone.
Every day this past week when I have struggled with doubt and fear, I have looked to that cross, thought of that cross, thought of God’s commitment to me. I have remembered that God is real, more real than anything else in this world and that despite my fear I have to keep going.
The night is sometimes long.
But the sun always rises in the morning.
