Freely given and freely recieved

"When love is powerless, all it can do is weep."
-Heidi Baker

"The place where God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
-Fredrick Bueckner (?)

Ok, there's this precipice. It's just a speck in the distance, then what seems like only 5 seconds later it has zoomed into full dramatic view, and you and me, we're so close to the edge that I can kick a pebble over the edge with an effortless nudge of my shoe.

We hear it bounce once, wait three seconds...twice, then nothing.

There is this unspoken urgency between us, a need for immediate action. Almost as if the world or some nameless horde is looming in from behind, and we have precious breaths before we have to make the decision

to leap

or to be engulfed.

Or maybe the chasm suddenly turns into a train, being watched by us above, moving quickly with its brightly colored boxcars chugging past our feet, oblivious to the same agonizing decision being made from above...

seconds count.

Do we leap?

What's really out there??

And the maddening question at hand: what happens if we stay? The threat doesn't seem deadly, but maybe it doesn't have to be an immediate death...maybe even just the ultimate decision to stay behind will fill our lungs innocently, quietly, soundlessly...like carbon monoxide. Until hours (or days or weeks or years) later, when it consumes our world, snuffing us out without a second thought in that cold, mechanical way.

Or maybe it will watch us with innocent eyes, shrug its shoulders, slouch away.

All I know is something's coming, I don't know when, and there are going to have to be quick hard choices. And either way it won't seem too dangerous, but I want to know before the edge comes, or that final whistle blows, which path is the one to truer life. And then, to have the courage to pray and cling to the answer.