What You See

You are watching me. I'll give you something to watch. I'll show you who I am.

I'll show you a boy that grew up as the smallest, the shortest youth in a senior class of 998 students. Yet, while I was less physically, I made up in mental prowess, in insightful discernment, in creativity. I did not need to be a powerful man in strength, an athletic jock, nor an intellectual nerd. I was I, and I blossomed as a rose unfurls its petals, in full bloom, the radiance of my inner being stopping others to peer deeply into the heart of the bud. Where is the last petal, the one that is growing at the moment?

I'll show you a man that succeeded, and a man that crashed and burned. Many times, I had the fast rise and the descending plummet. I made it happen. I pursued my will with the zeal of a nitro pulse that rockets a car down a racetrack. Yet, I was in the sprint of life, taking no heed of its marathon timeline. After twenty years of experiences powered by the rocket fuel of my passions, I burned out.

From the ashes I rose, and from the fertile ground that a wildfire leaves behind, new roots penetrated the rocky soil of my life from the Root that never dies. Though my house had fallen, the foundation remained built upon the Rock. Said, that if a wildfire burns a vineyard, the grandfather root, from which every branch was planted, will live. This is the story of my life. All that remained was the True Vine of my life, the root that lasts forever, beyond our concept of time.

Like a lotus flower that blooms in spring, it came from a source buried in the dark of a lake, a shoot that reaches upward to find the Light. Once it broke the surface, it could breathe again and blossom with beautiful life. A Phoenix is rising from the ashes, a lotus flower blooming, a rose that opens to bear the petals of each stage of life. That is vulnerability.

I say this to those that are watching me, that the past is dead and gone, like ashes, like the mud of decay at the bottom of a lake, like the remnants of a rocket that disintegrates upon its fall to earth. A new life begins, and this is what you should watch, not the reruns of tiring episodes of a soap opera. Embrace the new, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the blessing of living by faith in what is not seen, for it is not what we see that is important, but what lies beyond our perception viewed with the eye of the heart and not the eyes of the mind.

Selah.

Shalom.

Amen.