for when it is impossible

A week ago, huddled around a phone screen at the piano teacher's home, eight of us watched as a rocket named Falcon Heavy was launched into space.  After the countdown, clouds of gray and red came bursting forth from the base of the rocket in apocalyptic proportions as the engines were, quite literally, fired.  It exploded upward and in 3 minutes it was out of our Earth's atmosphere and in space.  3 minutes.

Just days before, while quizzing my oldest for a social studies quiz, he informed me that the Wright brother's first flight in 1903 was 59 seconds long and lifted only 852 feet off the ground.

A lot has changed in 115 years.

Those two brothers stood on a beach accomplishing a task that not too long before, others considered impossible.  Those same two brothers would have thought to themselves that the out-of-this-world triumph we most recently witnessed, would also have been impossible.

You know, they were right.  In their finite view of the world, it was impossible.

We live in a time, and a country for that matter, where possibility is waved at us like a banner.    And, while I'm beyond grateful for the freedoms we are able to possess, there is also a temptation, and a command, to be way too self sufficient.  If the words "I Can't" dare to escape from our mouths than we are automatically seen as not courageous enough, or adventurous enough, or appreciative enough, or faithful enough, or just plain not trying hard enough. "I Can" should be our mantra instead, whispering "yes I can" to ourselves over and over like a little engine that is pulling a load way too heavy up a hill. 

But ya'll, impossible pops in on the daily because on my own, everything is just plain impossible.  Raising my children to be Godly men when I'm a hot mess of sinfulness is impossible.  Accomplishing every item on the ongoing list of things to do is impossible. Getting through the day without stumbling is impossible.  Forgiving others, loving others, remembering others, appreciating others.  All of it, all of the time, is impossible.  My bootstraps keep breaking, there's nothing to pull up.

So I am here to tell you this, listen carefully.  It is OK for impossible to be a thought that often flies through our minds.  It is normal that impossible is often used to describe a goal that is set before us.  It is natural for the impossibility of things to bring you to your knees at the brink of frustration, desperation, and beyond. 

It does not make you a person of little faith to have uttered those words.  We need to understand what impossible feels like, and for very important reasons.  Without the concept of impossible, we would not, after breaking down because of all the impossibilities, later be able to stand in unadulterated awe when the impossible actually happens.

We were created in limited humanity.  We were created for dependency on something else, because we are just not able on our own.  Our vision is limited, our vision only sees black and white, God is the one who puts in the color.

"How dull the world would be if we limited ourselves to the possible.  The only God who seems to me to be worth believing in is impossible for mortal man to understand and therefore, He teaches me through the impossible." ~Madeleine L'Engle

Why would I need to throw myself at the feet of the Savior, why would I think to rest peacefully in the hands of my Creator, if everything was possible?  The answer, I wouldn't.  If all the things we imagined we immediately had the ability to do where would our boasting go?  Even those immediates we are already skilled to do are apart from us because "the reason it comes easy to us is because God has gifted us the ability to do it."

"Our way lies not in human ingenuity, but in a return to God." says Billy Graham.  God is my why and my how.  For Him and through Him, are all things.  Every. single. one.

Praying that your impossibles don't lead you to yourself, but my God of all the impossibilities.  The one who exists to accomplish the impossible.  Pray for me.