Sometimes life will toss you in very unfamiliar waters and you are expected to swim or drown. The options are limited and so are the resources. Fear often gets the best of us and we freak out in utmost despair. I have been at log heads and cross roads often times, where life tosses you a stale piece of bread to sustain you for a season. It does not make sense why one finds themselves in such predicament yet the survival instinct is strengthened through such experiences.
Recently I went through an experience that threatened to wreak the very foundations of my faith. Suddenly everything I had known and hoped for was washed away in a single occurrence and I was left blank. Years of sacrifice and hard work had all come to a futile end. I had more questions than answers, more emptiness than essence. The waves seemingly swept over me and in that moment I wished the jaws of death would swallow me.
A couple of weeks later, I found the strength to continue running the race of life and interestingly more enthusiastically than I had done before. Friends and family are strong anchors in the stormy seasons of life. Sometimes your adopted family of friends will stick closer than ‘brothers’. At the end of the day, family is the people that make us feel at home.
In the proceeding weeks, things took a suddenly twist and there was the dawning of a new day. It was as if every tide had suddenly gotten tired of contending with me, what a relief it was to feel the warmth of life again.
A friend who watched me go through this season asked me; “How are you able to pull through so easily?” The question took me by surprise because I could not find the easy part of my recent journey. In that moment I realized that often times what people see and the reality are two different perspectives. While I was fighting for my life, someone thought I was simply sailing through. It dawned on me that in our darkest moment we lose sight of grace and yet that is when grace abounds the most.
The lyrics of amazing grace will often make more sense at the end of a storm. As the waves become quiet, the voice of grace becomes louder. The whole time the tunes were playing but your focus was on the storm. Grace is what sails us through and yet often times we notice it not. We ride on wings of grace from time to time and yet fail to recognize the means by which we arrived. The wings of grace often make silent flaps that the human senses will not notice and yet the force there of is unstoppable. The magnitude of their weight is unimaginable and its stability unshakable.
We ride on the wings of grace day by day and we sail high above the storms of life. We see the storms with my eyes, hear their crushing sounds and feel the impact of their waves yet even then we remain unshakable. Grace upholds us when everything gives way, calms us when anxiety over takes us, delivers us from our own stupidity and anchors us from unforeseen troubles.
The next time someone asks you how you made it through a storm, remember the silent wings of grace that speak louder than the trumpet sounds. It is by grace that we live and by this same grace we overcome. Ride on the wings of grace to your next level, to your destiny. Let grace lead you home.
