Katie Davis Majors has written another book. She is, perhaps, my favourite devotional writer. In fact, I don’t think of her as a writer, but more as a woman who lives fully and grasps God passionately and whose faith spills over, naturally, into what she puts on paper. I resonate with each book she’s written, and since I’ve just gotten my hands on the latest one, I’ll share tidbits with you as I make my way through it.
Katie begins the book, Safe All Along, with a story from life. In Africa, where she has lived for many years, she gets caught, with her daughter, in rapids. She thinks they will both drown. She is panicked. Terrified. Desperate.
They don’t drown, and she finds out – later – that if she could have seen the situation from above, as her husband and other children did, she would have known how calm the water would grow further on and how many slow spots would allow a safe swim to shore. She couldn’t see this in the midst of it, though.
Standing on the riverbank, later, Katie reflects and she shares these musings with readers…
[The near drowning experience] isn’t so different from the difficult seasons we… pass through in life. Caught up in the storms and rapids of challenging circumstances, with the waves at eye level, our scary or uncertain situations often seem impossible to escape. We can feel sure that this will be the end of us, that this will be the thing we will not overcome. From inside the current, we can see only a very small piece of river, and it is scary… But I imagine that for God it looks a whole lot more like what I saw standing on the edge of the riverbank… realizing that we had always been safe, that there had been so many different places to get out…
God sees the whole picture: all the twists and turns… He sees the whole trajectory of our lives [and the lives of those we love], and He sees all that He is doing in each situation, working all things for good, even in the midst of something that doesn’t look good.
Katie goes on to comment:
… I don’t want to move through life as the panicked, fearful, woman I was in the rapids. I want to live as the steady version of myself who stood on the riverbank rather than the frantic version of myself caught in the waves. I want to call out to Jesus as if my life depends on it, because it does, and I want to do so with the certainty that He will, He has, rescued us. I want to be a steady, unanxious person of prayer, not just for my own mental, emotional and spiritual health, but for my family, my community, and all those who might catch a glimpse of Christ through me. I want to live out of the place of peace that Jesus promises. (Safe All Along – Page 13)
I found this very relatable. What about you?
How many versions of you are there? Which dominates? Who do you want to be?
Today, how can you move a little closer to the steady version of you?
