Falling Up

I walk an empty path through woods, crunching snow as setting sun melts golden into clouds.  

Stopping at my favorite spot….plank bridge over  tiny creek, gurgling cold in the winter silence.  I linger there, breathing in God, making space in my soul.  Trying to feel how to answer His invitation to deeper intimacy.  I tell Him I’m not sure how, but I want to come in.  I ask Him to take me in to this place where my heart can beat with His.  

As I gaze into the water, I notice something.  The stream slips along just inches above the pebbled bottom.  But the sky above is bright and partly clear, stretching over a break in the branches overhead.  If I look into the water, but not through to the bottom, I can see a clear reflection of trees and sky, stretching way down into depths that are not there.  

I have always loved that illusion.  

I stand transfixed, imagining myself falling in headfirst, but I don’t hit earth….I fall into the sky.  And I can fly.

Falling up.  

And I hear an echo of eternity from somewhere deep and ancient.  The solid earth under my feet, the trees towering overhead, the cold air….everything I can touch and feel and see….is not the final reality.  God’s kingdom is like the illusion on the water.  Except it’s real.  

Human understanding gazes blankly into eternity, seeing only the dirt, the stones, the cold hard stuff of earth.  

But faith….faith sees different.  Faith sees what appears at first to be a dim reflection, wavering in the ripples.  Then it stills, becomes more clear.  Faith chooses to see the reality that looks upside down.  Faith takes the leap headfirst into what might be rock bottom, believing that what seems to be real is only a melting mist, and what appears as an illusion is the real thing.  

To live in God’s reality, we have to fall up.  And the people with earthly minds will think we are upside down.  

But that’s okay.  

Because anyone who walks upright in God’s reality will carry His presence everywhere.  And it will draw others to the water.  It will captivate them.  And maybe they will want to fall too.  Let go of earth.  Fall into God.