You know how when you're sick, your mind sometimes drifts to the strangest topics? A couple of nights ago as I lay in bed with a 103 degree fever, the particularly American mantra of self-trust kept playing around in my brain: "You can't count on anyone but yourself." It struck me, given my current situation at the time, just how ridiculous this statement is. I couldn't even trust my body to function properly or to keep me from death left to itself! I had counted on my body successfully getting me through finals week at my college, yet like a vindictive motorized vehicle, it chose to break down on me when I needed it most. If I can't count on anyone and I can't count on myself, what is left? Honestly, I don't know how the individualist atheist would respond. I know I have God, the only One I dare count on.
My doctor is a wonderful man who has worked as a missionary physician overseas but has returned to practice in the United States. He prayed for me over the phone. And as he prayed, this man of science, intimate with the human "machine" we call our bodies, reminded me how our fragile lives rest so completely in God's hands. Our blood itself is so perfectly designed to flow or clot when it should. And this is merely one aspect of many systems in our bodies that must simultaneously function without variance or failure. We live our every moment walking the tightrope of life and don't even think of how cavernously the mouth of death yawns below us and how, if God should loose His hand from ours, we would plunge into its hungry maw.
I'm thankful I have an all-powerful God to count on, One who governs the astral and the atomic, the celestial and the cellular. Knowing the depths of my heart, the last person I would trust is myself. However, knowing simply the surface of Jesus' heart, I trust Him with what He already owned before I gave it––my life.
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