Lifelines

Life-line - support that enables people to survive or to continue doing something (often by providing an essential connection).

If you read this blog often you know my ultimate lifeline is Christ. I’m still in the process of learning how deeply His rescue alternated my existence. I was very much a rebel caught up in a revolt. It was selfish…ugly…sad…heinous. What I deserved was punishment or better yet some sort of nightmarish banishment. What I received was unexpected favor, a place in the family. It was an amazing turn of events and one that is difficult to reconcile in my wildest imagination.

These days I also find lifelines by being with others who are fully alive in their inheritance intent on pursuing Christ’s heart. Such people refresh my soul and redirect my thoughts from worldly illusion to God’s reality. Like the friend I meet with weekly who is always sharing a helpful reading, a thought provoking idea, and an applicable story. His life radiates Christ, and I walk away settled and confident.

Our Sunday evening group is a lifeline too. It is a life discussion group that blends scripture, prayer, worship, fellowship and forms a community of like-minded people. Community doesn’t happen just by meeting together but it takes shape in the context of openness, vulnerability, humility, understanding, grace and shared experience. We are being transformed and want to share what God is doing in our lives with each other and others.

Just the other evening someone talked openly of an attitude God was personally correcting in their life. It wasn’t pointed nor was it judgmental. It was convicting. I began to realize that I needed God’s mercy in my life to orchestrate some similar attitude changes.

I am favored that my greatest lifeline is my wife. Together we have learned, grown and changed. Together we are learning, growing and changing. On gray days that seem overwhelmingly gloomy, she reminds me how God sees things and what’s really important in life. She shares the latest insight she has gathered from a recently read book. Often these times together happen in late afternoon around a cup of tea. When business interrupts I feel cheated as if I have been robbed of a golden treasure. Such is the value of lifelines.