HOW AM I DOING, LORD?

Our life is a gift with one chance to do it right.  An accident on my regular bike ride last week brought some soul searching. How am I doing, Lord? 

It could have been much worse, but I realized after it that one second can change everything.  It was the regular twenty-mile route on a clear, perfect day.  A chain-link covered ramp was just ahead.  I hurried up because a biker waited for me at the top.  It is a covered bridge across a river.  But at that moment as I reached her, my handlebar touched her handlebar and maybe her hand as well.  The next second I was hitting the chain-link fence at the top of the ramp head on and went down hard.  It took a second to realize that it really happened.  I got up, turned and faced the other biker and said, “It was my fault.  Are you alright?” She said the same thing to me twice.  I was fine; she was, too.  She rode down the ramp and was gone.  I turned to my bicycle still jammed against the fence, picked it up and coasted down the other side, but the chain was off, the gears had “jammed” and the front tire was damaged.  My next decision was to turn around, try to make it home without being rescued by my permanent, dependable rescuer.  Eric, my husband, has rescued me a few times.

This time, I managed to move the chain back on and limped the five or six miles home.  The bike was not totaled, the shop mechanic assured me…but the wait for it to be assessed and fixed and returned emphasizes my incident that changed everything.

I wondered out loud to my husband today, “Was God saying something to me?” “It could be.” But what I know is that life can turn a corner when you least expect it.  Incidents can happen that change the future, even the present.

A couple of places in Scripture came to me that night. They are contrasts.  One is a warning, one a mystery.

In Matthew, just before John baptized Jesus, he confronted Scribes and Pharisees who put on a false pretense of getting right with God (their hearts were deeply opposite).  John the forerunner of Jesus told them, “Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” Matthew 3:10. How am I doing, Lord?

But a mysterious verse in Ezekiel 47:12 lifts the spirit to hope. “And all trees for food shall go up by the torrent, on its bank on this side, and on that side. Its leaf shall not fade, nor its fruit fail. It will bear by its months because its waters come out from the sanctuary. And its fruit shall be for food, and its leaf for healing.” Does my life “bear good fruit”?

So, to end this introspection here is a thought.  Live every day with dependence on our Creator, Jesus Christ.  He has promised “I will never leave you or forsake you.” He will go ahead of me and come behind me.  I am His.

"Do not fear, nor be dismayed, for the LORD God, my God, will be with you. He will not fail you nor leave you."  (I Chronicles 28:20).