The Sleeper Awakens
He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. I will satisfy him with a long life, and show him My salvation. Psalm 91:15-16 NASB
My – Do you think we’ve plumbed this verse? Is there nothing more to mine here? Well, maybe we need to connect David’s poetic Hebrew with Charles Dickens’ languid English.
“For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind of smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep . . .”[1]
Dickens describes us. God’s grace has been a continuous element in our lives, so much so that we have taken it for granted. The sun will rise tomorrow is an assumption that we will awaken to see it rise. And all along God has been invisibly orchestrating our journeys. Perhaps the man who calls upon him is the same man who takes time to reflect—to remember—that grace has accompanied him every step of the way. Perhaps those long-fallen-asleep memories must be resurrected if we are to understand what God means with His promise of salvation. Perhaps we have been saved every day.
Birth and death are the same side of the coin. Neither is under our control. Both are laced with the divine. Both portend the purposes of God. Neither is complete without the other. The bookends of living aren’t opposed to each other. They are the framework of our being. They are the traffic signs of human direction. Go! Stop! Enough.
What would happen if you and I deliberately recalled all those times when we felt the hand of the Lord over us? Would we recognize that He was always there, even when we were too preoccupied to notice? Would our mental diaries of existence suddenly burst with divinity? Would we see that God always starts what He finishes, and as we approach the STOP sign, we recognize that the beginning was always in mind? We travel toward completion, resolving the traumas granted us before we began. We collect our heritage at last, folding it into a shape that passes beyond us, a memory reincarnated in the next one on the road. Birth is the gift God gives to those who are ready to accept the task of living. And in the process of completing that task, God shows His salvation, until, at last, we can say, “Oh, that’s what it was all about.”
Topical Index: salvation, memory, birth, death, Psalm 91:15-16
[1] Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Amen! They are renewed every morning… they… the recollections of those times when I felt the hand of the Lord over me. It is my utmost blessing that as i am nearing the time of His pronouncement, “enough,” my mental diaries are bursting with divinity… His presence and activity throughout my task of living. I see His salvation and I rejoice! Listen, and I will declare it! Watch, and I will show it! For He has made himself known to me… He is salvation!
Birth and death are the same side of the coin – I dont understand. Do you mean the sides of the same coin? Or otherwise?
My point is in the next sentence. We have no control over either. They both belong in the realm of the divine. We just travel between them. So they are both on the same side of the coin, the human side.