stepping in circles and spiraling stairways
Some see Time as an ocean; Huge and vast and seemingly unending and still all the while unpredictable and completely untamable. Others see time as a line; predictable with a start and finish that leads nowhere but forward. Still more see time as something else: a circle. All agree that time presents change. Whether hard or easy, we cannot deny that time is constantly going by and leaving us in the midst of change and the challenges that change brings forth. When we look forward and see these challenges before us we are presented with two options. “[We] either have the option to grow or to die,” as Patrick McGuire put it in an interview. As we walk around the circle of time we must choose to step up to the next level or continue in the circle and all its mundane attributes. Each challenge is merely another option to grow and take steps higher and higher. “Growing is painful, it character building, but it’s painful,” said Emelia Christie-Robinson. As we strain to find that place where we are getting closer and closer to God we also find pain and struggle, but where would we be without that? Life in a circle? Feeling the pain, the guilt, the depression, the loneliness, the anxiety, we are left with the complete emptiness of a refuse to change. All the while God is offering us more, he is calling us up to higher ground. The steps to get there might be tough but in reality nothing that is easy comes really valuable. McGuire said that, “It [doesn’t] always feel bigger than depression or just being at a low place but [God’s] presence has always been there whether I felt it or not.” It’s that place where knowledge precedes feelings that we find the perseverance to go deeper and press on. It’s only when we can look back and say, “I’ve gone through many changes, but above all else…God is calling us to be pursuers of truth,” as Christie-Robinson did that we find peace in the truth we cannot always feel. At that point we see ourselves outside the circle and the mundane life and find a season of change and a freshness that comes with a whole new set of challenges and feelings and also a whole new understanding of truth. So I offer this to you; that time is not merely an ocean or a line or even a circle, but time is an option to continue stepping in circles or take the challenge and find yourself climbing a spiraling stairway.