Vices Like Mud Pies

I'm sure you've heard the saying "God helps those who help themselves."

I've never really agreed with it.

Now that I think about it, though, it does make some sense.

Sure, He tends to us lovingly even as we sit in our self-created mud puddles. He's not going to just leave us there, but he's not going to drag us by our feet to a better, cleaner place.

He never leaves, of course. Always with us, always waiting.

What's He waiting for?

For us to stand up. To make that decision (that hard, powerful decision) to make the first moves to picking ourselves up out of the dirt. Sometimes we only need to move an inch, and He leaps a mile, lifting us up the rest of the way.

So we stand, weary and a mess. How long we must walk depends on the size of our mud puddle. Sometimes, they are huge, and it's not long--from a few steps to a yard or a mile--before we've decided to stop walking and sit down again. To satisfy ourselves with vices like mud pies and choose to become oblivious to the oceans of pleasure that we cannot see.

Today, I find that my mud puddle is huge--seven years long and a lifetime wide. I feel like I made progress at times, but I've also, in my selfishness, weariness, and inability to see the end of the road to something glorious, ran full speed through the shallow mud back into the deep of it.

Because that was an end that was familiar, albeit second-rate.

So where am I today? Is it the same attempts at a day of freedom that I've proclaimed so many times before?

I don't think so. Because today...

I can see the edge. It's good.

I have done my part, and stood.

Just a few more steps, and then

I will be myself again.