"Oxygen..........................."

“What makes you exist rather than not exist?”… In going back to re-visit a book before loaning it to a friend, I found myself gripped by this question, the author posing it not so much in terms of physically maintaining life, but rather of possessing “spiritual sustenance”, something which enables us to endure and to overcome all those negative things that come to us, just “part of the package”. My mother often lamented about having once asked my father if he thought he could live without her, he pausing before answering and explaining he had been thinking it over. It was he, actually, who died not too long afterwards and she who would go on to outlast two out of three other husbands; but whether or not those additional decades she achieved brought her any real joy, any “fullness” of having enjoyed such time is another matter. She labeled herself a “survivor” and indeed seemed at war with most everyone around her even unto the end… None of us knows what each day might bring. My oldest daughter’s nephew, yesterday evening, was returning home from dinner with his parents and, however it happened, at an intersection not far from my house, broadsided a passenger vehicle with his truck, killing the two people inside before they even knew what hit them. I can guarantee that there are at least two households this morning that know grief, people who woke up with their entire future shifted in perspective, a “knife in their gut” unable to be removed, reality unchangeable, the moment that was is as it is… Only a faith anchored in Him, in a resurrection made available unto us, provides a place of refuge, an oasis of assurance, a source of truth when nothing at all makes any sense. His breath renews us; His word steadies us; His commitment goes with us through the storm, even when it comes of our own making. He is; therefore I am……