The Arm of the Lifeguard:

Down, down, and under. It was inevitable, she was sinking. No one could prevent the ship wreck. The winds were beginning to blow, and so she willingly gave herself over to the gods of the seas. They would decide her fate tonight. Yet, inside her she had already selected her own destiny. She had already chosen to drown. Even when the gods of the sea, whom she had chosen to believe, had not yet made up their minds concerning her.

But she was already drowning...deep, deep...way down under.

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Every second, someone drowns. It comes upon them like an unexpected thief in the night. Some have drowned due to their own mistakes or errors, while others have drowned from chasing things which should be chasing after them instead. Some have drowned because of a lack of knowledge, and others have drowned because of too much knowledge. But there is another category of drowning: those who out rightly "choose" to drown. They choose to drown because life makes them bitter. They choose to drown, because, heck...they want to! They take a look at life and they choose to drown. They take a look at what life has to offer, and then in the midst of crazy circumstances they choose to see their cups half-empty, rather than half-full. Rather than dream to become the majestic princes riding on horses, they settle for becoming the very slaves who walk the horses (Ecclesiastes 10:7). When they stare at the beauty of the sun, they just see the sun...they do not see God behind the sun.

Drowning could be a choice, even when we think it is not. We may think that oh, the things we face daily are different from what others face. But the thing is that your shoes hurt in a different place than where someone else's shoes hurt. But you don't know where.
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If drowning is a choice, then we must choose something else. We must burst through the waters and reach for the arms of the life guard. We must raise our hands up and kick our feet violently, like a huge fish does when it is gasping for air on dry land. Oh, no no no...it doesn't just sit down there and give up the ghost...it shakes and shakes until the entire earth beneath it begins to shake too. But we give up too fast. We, on the other hand, are fast to determine that there is no pulse left in our bodies. We are sometimes too fast to pronounce the death sentence.

And yet, the Master Potter works on His wheel...tirelessly...to shape and remold each of us that He has created.

I imagine that each day He chooses to remold my eyes...to open them so that they can see the bigger picture. I imagine that He shapes my heart and my mind to know and understand what 'hope' means. To understand that when I am given the choice between drowning and hoping, that I choose HOPE.

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