Just Jump Already

Yes, I know the chasm at which you stand. 
But I know now it’s really not that big a deal. 
You just jump, the bridge appears.
No thinking, no plotting, just jumping
out of a heart desirous to love.
Sure, it seems scary where you are,
like a leap out of an airplane
with only the promise of a parachute
being provided on the way down.

But the metaphor’s all wrong, an illusion
intended to paralyze you with fear.
Faith’s really just a child’s joyous jump 
from off the side of  the pool
into eager parental arms
longing to cuddle their little one
like they did when they gathered 
their beloved toddler from the bath
in a warm towel of satisfied delight.  

It’s uncomfortable and cold where you stand
as if your were on the edge of Niagara Falls
naked, clutching a barrel, trying to decide for death
while praying for a Deus ex helicopter ending. 
Jesus isn’t going to marshall in to rescue you there
because this is not his scene, running around
rescuing people at their commanding pout
that God just act the genie part we wrote in our scripts
so that we could be supported in our Messiah roles. 
 
I don’t care what Augustine or Kierkegaard said.
You all need a point of view shift.   
It’s not about the anxious leap, 
the focus on what we have to give up
in order to muster up
the courage to leap into an abyss of fear.
You should be scared to death of that
because it’s not an accurate view
and a running-away-from that is not faith. 

Our Shepherd God leads, encourages, guides.
He doesn’t drive us like lemmings to our death.
Instead, Jesus just stands in the pool   
waiting for us to jump or slowly descend the stairs
or whatever feels right for us, and he holds out
his hand to receive us and hold us secure. 
Yes, there is a gap, but more like that of Michelangelo’s 
beneficent hand reaching toward straining hand in Creation’s space,
not a yawning abyss we must somehow traverse as paraplegic souls.
  
Besides, the abyss is what you’re running from,
not leaping over or into,
and the abyss cannot be escaped,
for we carry it with us; it is us.
We can only bring it into the luminosity of love
in a splash of Glory’s delight
that waits to engulf our abyssmal beloved selves  
and illumine our destructive lies
that drive us to the despair of paralyzed fear. 

                                                                            © 2004 Tess  Lockhart. All rights reserved.