Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.
Romans 6:19 (NIV)

There is movement to life. Swift is the current of the river of life even when we feel relatively stationary. Good Dr. Einstein opened our minds to this reality in his theory of relativity. I sit on an airplane feeling inert and motionless while I am actually flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour.  So I may feel “stuck” in life while day by day the river of life carries me swiftly toward my ultimate destination.

This morning as I read the words above from Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was taken back to my dark years. Having isolated a part of my heart and life from all others, I “offered myself” to impurity. In my secret isolation, I did not perceive how swiftly the river of life carried me onward. It was as if I had hidden myself in a dark, windowless capsule floating heedlessly in life’s river. Nor did I perceive how my impurity “ever increased” until existence inside my dark cocoon became unmanageable chaos. Things were shriveling up and dying inside and out. Something had to change.

I opened the airtight seal on my dark capsule and invited Light in. I could then see enough to claw my way out and on top of my floating chamber. Looking around and getting my bearings, I began using anything I could find as a rudder to begin steering myself in a new direction.

Then I looked up and saw Jesus walking on the water just a ways off to one side. He reached out His hand and smiled. “Come with me,” he said. I looked at the running water between us and stared. I looked back at Him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said his hand still outstretched.

I stepped off the flotsam of my poor choices and reached out to offer my hand to Jesus…

featured image from film short Flotsam by the Zellner Bros.