I lean over the edge, lean into the crashing thunder, into the foaming, leaping white that forever falls. Like time, it keeps roaring on, unstoppable, undammable.
My fingers are raw red with cold. The mist rises into the heavens, coating tree branches, blades of grass, in lacy hoarfrost, the railing with inches of ice. My hand on the glassy rail, I crane over and wonder: Can I let go, leap too, run the river? Can I, with utter abandon, plunge into the waters of His will? Can I release me and sacrifice?
And I hear Hannah Hurnard’s Shepherd whisper through the deafening falling….
“Much-Afraid,” (oh, that is me, isn’t it?) said the Shepherd’s voice in her ear, “what do you think of this fall of great waters in their abandonment of self-giving?”…
“It is the leap which they have to make, the awful height from which they must cast themselves down to the depths beneath, there to be broken on the rocks. I can hardly bear to watch it.”
“Look closer,” he said again. “Let you eye follow just one part of the water from the moment when it leaps over the edge until it reaches the bottom.”
“At first perhaps the leap does look terrible,” said the Shepherd, “but as you can see, the water itself finds no terror in it, no moment of hesitation or shrinking, only joy unspeakable, and full of glory, because it is the movement natural to it.
Self-giving is its life.
It has only one desire, to go down and down and give itself with no reserve or holding back of any kind. You can see that as it obeys that glorious urge the obstacles which look so terrifying are perfectly harmless, and indeed only add to the joy and glory of the movement.”
~Hind’s Feet on High Places
It is the New Year, and I stand on the brink.
And jump.
The joy is in the going low.
Father? Make it, self-giving, going down, natural to my movement. Give me the courage to leap.
Photos: from leaning over the edge, getting ready…
