I can still feel the cold chill of the fog through my clothes deep to my bones... curled up on a back porch just barely out of the rain. My body soaked from the lonely walk up and down the street... aimless and tired... tired of living... too broke to kill myself in style... without a hope... without a rope...
That is what the rain does to me. It reminds me of what now seems a whole lifetime ago... a time most would rather forget, but the rain helps me to remember. I want to remember the cold loneliness and shivers of desperation and a mixture of emotions... sober, and not a drink in sight to dull the pain. Why do I want to remember?
It is nostalgic to me to be alive today and remember a life I was throwing away...
a life I wrote-off as worthless and hopeless, only to have lived another day.
Another 30 years in fact... another whole lifetime... and I'm still breathing.
Today I sat looking out the window a perfect day, with a perfect coffee in my hand, with my perfect wife and our perfect life... and I could see something coming across the valley... I could feel it in my bones... the dampness and ghastly chill... the drizzle of rain.
It took me from the comfort of the warmth of a perfect wood fire in the stove, the kind with the glass door to appreciate it's glowing beauty and radiant comfort... back to a time unlike today... to a time I was lost... surrounded by people... yet alone. You know, I don't mind the journey... it reminds me of what I have, and all that I am and what I have become... and reminds me of the One who keeps me.
Like the day I met my wife... I knew she was the one for me... was the day I was given the opportunity to ask Jesus to enter my life and take over... I knew what I was without Him... but if I only had a few more breaths in this life... I knew they belonged to Him. I heard someone say even if I end up in Hell... this life with Jesus has been real...
how desperately I needed to be real.
So today I left my perfect home... in the perfect darkness of the evening rain...
to find a computer some 15 miles away to write these words... "I remember"
...in hopes of finding a kindred soul down at the bottom of life's barrel,
to give them some glimpse of a new life...
My prayer is for that precious soul to remember this day, and remember it well... because after you have trusted my Savior you may soon forget...
after experiencing the perfect life, this is the one...
you almost threw away.
"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..." (Deuteronomy 30:19)
If you already are a child of the Living God and feel you have blown it, or feel you are dead inside... don't cheat God out of the opportunity to raise another "Lazarus" from the dead. Soon, you too will be living the upside of down.
Grace Like Rain - Todd Agnew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGJb-mPM...Kutless - Sea of faces
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2RKyqnze...Thats My King! Do You Know Him?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5AcrEHQF...