The summer following my high school graduation, I received an invitation to attend freshman orientation at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I had been accepted for fall admission, and my grandparents, who were going to visit their friends in North Carolina, were planning to drop me off in Raleigh to begin the fall term.

But attending orientation was another matter. Raleigh was a far distance from my home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and money was tight. While orientation would be nice to attend, it was neither mandatory nor necessary. I could have bypassed orientation and jumped straight into college life that fall. But something in me wouldn’t allow me to do that. Beyond explanation, and in ways that opposed my normal personality, I adamantly insisted that I needed to go.

After some deliberation, my mother agreed to allow me to make the trip, and she purchased a round-trip bus ticket for me, enabling me to do so. On the day of my departure, my family drove me into downtown Pittsburgh and waited with me at the bus terminal until I was safely on-board.

I remember little about the actual trip, except that I had to change buses during the middle of the night in Washington, D.C. When I arrived in Washington, the huge terminal was nearly deserted. As I walked through the terminal on my way to the restrooms, I remember seeing only an employee or two behind the counter area, but no one else in the vicinity.

To access the restrooms, which were below ground, I had to go down a flight of stairs that were designated solely for the restrooms. Carrying my suitcase down the stairs, I entered the ladies’ room. When I had finished there, I opened the door and stepped out onto the small landing area at the bottom of the stairwell.

There I came to an abrupt stop. I could go no further. My path forward was blocked by a dozen or so male teenagers of questionable appearance and intent. They were standing motionless, apparently waiting for me to come out.

When I did, the fellow closest to me (the only one whose face showed any expression) grinned insincerely, and he began to verbally harass me with questions regarding whether or not I needed a boyfriend. For the second time in recent weeks, I heard myself speaking and acting in an adamant manner that was not my norm. Returning the fellow’s gaze with one of my own, I defiantly slung retorts back at his insolent questions and stood my ground.

I had little choice. My options were limited, to say the least. Going forward was impossible, and going backward would have made matters worse. I could stand, or I could fold.

The situation in which I found myself was similar to that of the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt. (See Exodus 14) With their path forward blocked by the Red Sea and Pharoah’s army closing in from behind, they were stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. So was I.

But the similarity between my situation that night and the Israelites in their predicament did not end there. The adamant spirit that arose within me during the confrontation outside of the restroom seemed to be responding to the same instructions that God had issued to the Israelites through Moses.

“…Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:13, 14)

Having essentially no time to think and nowhere to go, I (as had the Israelites) simply stood, confronted by evil.

Evil is a reality that continually threatens our safety, as well as our futures. It is always lurking, waiting to take advantage of our vulnerable moments and then harassing us in attempts to pinpoint our weaknesses. Even we who live in relative safety from “serious” (however one might choose to personally define “serious”) evil, still suffer from the negative consequences of others’ wrongful words and actions, as well as from our own.

Our enemy is not the people who deliver the evil, but the evil itself—–the entity of thoughts, words and actions that oppose the nature and will of God. Evil’s ploy is to confront all of mankind repeatedly with the temptation to doubt God, to cause us to disbelieve to some degree in God’s Goodness, if not in His existence. The doubt that evil initiates is intended to undermine mankind’s faith in God, causing each of us to “fold” in defeat when events don’t line up with our personal expectations of what a “good” God would/should do.

That night in Washington, as I stood, the “miracle” of deliverance from evil’s intentions (whatever they may have been) unfolded before me in a manner similar to the way in which the Israelites’ miracle of deliverance had unfolded before them many years earlier. The God of the past proved Himself to be the same God of the present—–my present.

For no apparent reason, the “leader of the pack” of teenage boys suddenly stopped his incessant barrage of remarks, clamming up, as if he had been muzzled. Then, as I watched in silence, he smirked in a way that must have epitomized Pharaoh’s attitude when Pharoah (in belief that he was the one determining the Israelites’ fate) gave the Israelites permission to leave Egypt. Intentionally feigning chivalry, the so-dubbed pack leader bent his left arm across his abdomen, bowed at the waist and made an exaggerated sweeping motion toward the stairway with his right arm, indicating that I was free to go.

When he did so, every member of the “pack” took one step backward, creating a pathway right through their midst. Carrying my belongings, I walked through the “sea” that had parted before me, climbed the stairs and never looked back. God had made a way, and I took it, walking into freedom.

I share this event with an excruciating awareness that other individuals, encountering similar situations, have not always fared as well as I did that night. Some have endured painful trauma, and others have not survived at all.

I cannot explain why the “sea” parted before me that night in Washington, while at other times and places it has not. But I do know that had it not done so on that particular night, my life and the lives of some other individuals would have been vastly different. For the following morning, having arrived on campus in the early dawn hours, as I sat alone in a dorm lobby waiting for the campus to awaken, in walked the young man who would later become my husband.

Had I ended up in a hospital (or worse) the night before, I would have missed my appointment with my future, a future of God-given goodness that would be regularly confronted by the evil that had backed down on this particular occasion. Evil is relentless. Of that we have no doubt. Yet, in God’s proven goodness and faithfulness, we do repeatedly doubt.

The Israelites had the same difficulty choosing to trust God that we today encounter. Even after miraculously passing through the Red Sea and receiving numerous other miracles from God, they repeatedly displayed their double-mindedness concerning Him. Even with their minds bouncing back and forth between good and evil, they (as do we) continued living solely by the abundant grace of God that He provides. All the while, they continued accepting various degrees and forms of evil into their lives, failing to recognize the true nature of the evil that incessantly tempted them.

Their acceptance of the doubt with which they were tempted led them to house the very evil to which they were adamantly opposed.

To stand victoriously against evil’s temptations, the Israelites (as do we today) would have to entrust both their present and their future to God alone. Times may change, but evil does not. Every moment of every day, whether we realize it or not, we are all forced by evil’s presence to “stand,” trusting God, or to “fold,” defeating ourselves by enabling doubt to persuade us from the Truth.

But to trust God with our present and our futures, we must first trust God in our pasts, without exception, no matter what has occurred. We must believe that along whichever “escape routes” God has carried (is carrying and will carry) us, that those routes have delivered (are delivering and will deliver) us into the futures that were (and are yet) ours to possess. We live in a world of continual choices that must be made, and God works within our collective decisions (be they for good or for evil) for our good and His glory, whether we believe so or not.

The One and Only True God is the God who reached down from on high with His Mighty Right Arm (His Son), working salvation for us (See Psalm 98:1 & Titus 2:11-14), eternally parting the “sea” of sin and death into which evil hounds us. This One True God, who made a “path” big enough for all of us to follow, is the same God who can be trusted with every lesser aspect of life. He is the God of all who trust Him with their personal salvation through Jesus Christ, forbidding doubt to encroach upon God’s rightful territory:  us.

We are God’s children, His creation, His gift of life, embodied in His Son through our faith in the finished work of the Cross. Without faith, the “sea” does not part and deliverance does not come.

Jesus is mankind’s only viable option. He is God Incarnate and the Ultimate Escape Plan, the only Way both out and up. He is the only One who can and who does deliver us from all evil–—the evil that He conquered for us. Using His very life, Jesus cleared an escape route, along which we can follow Him into true freedom–—freedom from all doubt of God, both now and forever.

A life free from doubt of God is possible, not by our efforts (that has been proven for all time), but by God’s grace in Christ Jesus. Jesus is the Victor over every doubt—–every dead end that evil attempts to fabricate. He is the One who delivers us into everlasting, loving relationships with God, our Father, via the knowledge of Truth, against which the temptation of doubt is powerless.

Jesus, our Living Savior, is the Only One, who not only claims to know the way, but who has walked His Way out of death, escaping from evil’s eternal hell. The proof is in His absence from His Tomb and in His Presence in our lives. Jesus lives among us because His escape route works. By following Jesus, we are led into the everlasting life that Jesus is living. We experience the life with God that God always has intended for us to live.

All other supposed ways to heaven, nirvana, inner peace, tranquility, satisfaction, etc. (despite the allure of their worldly packaging) are personal death traps, filled with empty promises that die along with those who choose to live by them. Their promises (in this life and the next) are as dead as they are.

Every one of them is a literal dead end, leaving no way out.

Jesus Christ is the Only Way to escape both evil’s presence and its future.

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“…how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?”  (Hebrews 2:3a)

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THOUGHTS ON “THE LESSON OF THE PARTING”

Cathy Butler on March 29, 2013 at 10:21 am said:  “God certainly had a better plan for you that night… and Keith! You have accomplished good works for His Kingdom, with even more to do! Thank you, with love.“

A couple of months ago, I decided to make a big pot of homemade soup. After the soup had simmered sufficiently, I stirred it one last time. Looking forward to finally being able to enjoy the soup, I pivoted to my right to get a dish off the bottom shelf of the wall cabinet next to me. But when I opened the upper cabinet door, a glass baking dish slid off the stack of dishes on the top shelf, falling straight toward me.

Caught unaware by the unexpectedness of the event, I had little time to react. My head reeled backward, but my feet remained stationary. At the same time, I (or someone—I really don’t know who it was) must have touched the falling dish just enough to divert its path. Instead of continuing to fall straight toward me, I distinctly remember watching the dish follow a trajectory that angled to my right-—an impossibility without some kind of assistance.

A moment later, the dish’s three foot fall came to an abrupt end when the dish slammed into the solid surface counter-top, literally shattering the dish to smithereens. The impact caused the broken pieces of glass to radiate outward, flying across the kitchen. Some of the glass landed in the sink full of dishwater. Other pieces flew or slid the entire twelve-foot length of the counter-top and beyond, with some pieces bouncing off the far back wall of the kitchen. Pieces of glass covered the kitchen floor, as well as a good portion of the adjacent dining room floor. In the words that my husband would later use to describe the scene, all that remained of the dish were “a thousand tiny, javelin-shaped shards” that seemed to be everywhere.

While the scene itself is fairly easy to convey, what happened in the silence that followed the explosion of glass is not. The event was surreal.

Though my conscious mind suddenly seemed to go absolutely blank of thought, something else deep within me shifted into high gear. I was “blank but not void.” The only comparison that I can make is to that of tube TVs from decades back. When one of the TVs would be turned on, the picture would not arrive on the screen instantaneously. Rather, the screen would remain blank for a good number of seconds while the set “warmed up.” The television’s inner system was functioning in its preparation to present a picture, but the picture could not be made visible until the work on the inside was complete. So it was with me.

In this “blank but not void” state, I remained motionless for several seconds. Then my eyes began to slowly sweep the room, surveying the disaster scene that surrounded me. Seeing glass everywhere, I slowly lowered my head to scan my body. I didn’t see a single piece of glass or drop of blood on me.

A few seconds later, though, a gruesome image from a movie scene popped into my head, reminding me of a movie character who the audience had been led to believe had been unharmed by flying glass… until the camera panned down to reveal large chunks of glass embedded in the character’s body. Seeing that image, I tiptoed in my socks through the “minefield” of glass, into the dining room. There I stared at my reflection in the wall mirror, affirming that my well-being, unlike the movie character’s, was real.

Then, while still “blank but not void,” I tiptoed back through the “minefield,” returning to the exact position where I had been standing when the dish had shattered. There I stood, just waiting… but for what? I didn’t have a clue, until the revelation arrived.

In an instant, the “screen” in my mind flashed on, as my mouth simultaneously whispered, “God, You saved me!” Then, while still absorbing that first admission, my tongue confessed the rest of the revelation: “Jesus IS my Savior.” (The stress that was placed on the word “is,” as the word was spoken, cannot be overemphasized.)

Reality was that the dish had shattered no more than two feet from where I had been standing, and I had made a good-sized target. I could (should) have had glass all over me:  on my clothes, in my hair, stuck to my socks… somewhere. I could (should) have looked somewhat similar to the injured movie character, but I didn’t. Not a single shard had touched me, let alone harmed me, not even when I had tiptoed through the debris.

The reality was incredible, seemingly impossible and, therefore, difficult to accept as true. Against all odds, I was completely unscathed (whole; unharmed).

The reality defied worldly explanation and required an adjustment in my thinking. That day, God “reconnected the dots” of information about Him that were in my mind, forming a more accurate portrayal of Himself than I had previously envisioned. In doing so, He defeated doubts that had stood between us, interfering with our relationship. As doubts fell, God gained ground, strengthening His stronghold on me.

God used the event that day to solidify our relationship, intervening in a way that I could not mistake in order to further solidify my belief in His active Presence in my life. He used the event, but He did not create it. He neither pushed the dish off the shelf nor doled out the repercussions of the fall as punishment. Rather, the laws of gravity and momentum, as well as other natural laws that resulted in the shattering, had been long established, put in place by God when He had created the world. By failing to heed God’s warning concerning my interaction with the laws, I became responsible for the mess that had been generated. The shattering was created by my lack of obedience, not by God’s will.

Earlier that day, after putting the dish away on the upper shelf, where it had been kept without incident for a couple of years, I had specifically heard the inner voice of God tell me that it wasn’t safe to leave the dish there. Reopening the cabinet door, I had checked the dish’s stability for myself. Then, deeming it to be “okay,” safe in my estimation, I had left the dish where I had placed it.

Had I been fully synchronized to God at that moment, I would have said, “Thanks” and moved the dish. But, my response—–more along the line of “Really? Hmm…. (check dish by touching it) It looks good to me”—–lacked both trust and awareness. I was more in sync with my own wishes than with the wishes of the One who was trying to keep me safe. In hindsight, the audacity of my reassurance that all was well is laughable. Frankly, though, it doesn’t surprise me, and I am sure that it didn’t surprise God.

The truth is that all was not well, though it could have been, had I taken the time to digest what God was saying to me. But I didn’t, and repercussions followed. A prolonged and thorough cleaning of the kitchen was necessary, a dish was forever gone, and the soup (not knowing if it contained glass or not) had to be discarded.

Yet, in the midst of the mess–—my mess that God had tried to prevent—–I remained standing, purely by God’s grace. This piece of Truth, far greater than any single incident, is the foundation of life, now and forever more.

Only by the grace of God do we (mankind), protected by the blood of Jesus, miraculously remain standing in God’s Presence after having experienced the epitome of all falls—–the Fall that shattered our (mankind’s) relationship with God. Adam and Eve, having chosen not to heed God’s warning regarding the fruit of one single tree, became responsible for the repercussions in this world that followed. Their lack of trust and awareness led them to check the forbidden fruit for themselves, touching it and then concluding, “Really? Hmm…  It looks good to me.”

Going their own way by following their own desires that contradicted God’s will—His best—for them, they separated themselves from God, the Source of all life. Apart from God, life deteriorates, resulting in decay, destruction, dismay and death. That is a fact of the nature of life, a fact established by God in the creation of life—–life that has always been tied to Him. The responsibility for the “mess” created in disobedience lies with mankind, not with God. We have each contributed to the “mess” with our own audacity.

Yet God (being God) stepped in to save us all from our own foolishness. Of this we can be certain: God wants only good for us in this life, as well as in the next one. The bottom line is that God is the salvation from our prideful egos that we all need right here and now, no matter where we are or what we are doing,

Even if we are quick to concur that God wants all men to be saved through faith in Jesus for eternity (1 Timothy 2:4), we may also be too quick at times to place self-defined limitations on what that salvation entails. In dependence upon our own judgment, instead of the indisputable Word of God, we can convince ourselves (though never God) that we know best. But, of course, we do not. We all—–including Adam, Eve and me–—have said (more than once), “It looks good to me” and proceeded to do things our way, failing to heed God’s warnings that were made known for our benefit.

But thank God for His grace that overcomes our every shortfall.

Jesus is moment to moment salvation in this life, as well as in the next. He is the One who delivers, the One who heals, the One who restores, the one who makes whole…  the One who is present tense Provision of all good things. He is life.

One day, the Truth of Jesus will be seen in His full glory, shattering all doubt to smithereens and putting an end once and for all to man’s audacity.

And when all is said and done, I am sure of one thing:  I will still be standing miraculously in Christ Jesus, purely by the grace of God, in spite of me.

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“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—” (Ephesians 2:8)