Monkeys...

It's been a long and relatively rough road for me of late. You've read of it in the frustrated ministrations of blogs of old, but even those have not fully expressed the level to which I have found myself pressed. It ends, we all know that- at some point, but it never ends exactly as or when we expect it. So, I write this from the other side of victory. i write this from the side where victory is promised though not yet realized, and from a place where promises are still that, things to which you cling to- oftentimes desperately- lest despair overtake you. I write from a place of ever increasing brokenness, knowing that only in denying my ability to put myself back together again will I ever be found in a place of real and genuine wholeness.

If it's true what the Bible says, and all the promises of God really are "yes and amen," then we can as much hold to those promises as we can anything that is "tangible" and "real" on the other side (the fulfilled side) of the promise. But holding to a promise isn't where it stops.

I remember growing up and playing on the monkey bars, you know those things jutting out from the ground in all their linear metal glory, which enabled you to how off you ape-like prowess, often to the delight and admiration (or so I thought) of whatever adolescent females were playing on the nearby swings or see saw (teeter totter to some-not sure who, but I heard Ned Flanders say it once). As you got older, you further attempted impressification (not a word- I know) through super human feats like pull ups and such, but that's farther in the future than this analogy allows. No, ape-like agility is where we currently find ourselves.

To those not accustomed yo or familiar with the Monkey Bars (first of all, I am sorry for your loss- they were awesome), the ultimate trick was to keep moving forward. Take one hand and grasp the next bar, shift weight and grab the next, shift weight and grab the next, and the next and... until you reach the other side and start the blessed process all over again. In retrospect, I'm not sure why they were such fun, but I did absolutely love those things. Anyway- holding and hanging on in one place was not advised because eventually gravity would win. Holding on to the bar, secure though it was, eventually led you to feel the eternal weight of the world pulling down on you- so you kept moving. Was the aforementioned weight gone? By no means, but now you had an accomplishable goal a few inches in front of you, followed by another and another, and another until you found yourself at the end and able to stand up and rest.

What if the promises are just like that? What if, even though we know them to be solid and filled with substance, backed by the full weight and authority of God, we aren's just supposed to hold onto them. What if we're to move? We see an opportunity so we seize it and move forward, if only a few inches, until another one appears. We follow this (occasionally menial, trite and sometimes confusing) pathway of repetition until we find ourselves at the end and still holding on to the promise, but now with stronger arms and a bolder will then we had before.

We've now seen the promise become more than just a distant hope, it has literally been the thing to which we have held, that which has moved us forward and kept us from falling into an abyss of unfulfilled dreams and broken possibilities. Though reaching the end of this particular set of monkey bars is not the final destination, we do find ourselves in a place where we can rest, look back and realize how great is our God.