Signs of Salvation

Doubled over at the burden of things in the past,

Brought to a precipice emptied and alone,

Thought for confusion – life’s end at last,

Ushered forth is a heartbroken moan.

Hard to believe now this is it,

The throbbing presence of struggle and hurt,

When at a sober moment all can be done is sit,

Reliving a life that rests in the dirt.

Instead now, for a moment, the mind’s caused to turn,

Feels the whisper of Spirit’s warm embrace,

Just when inner world was ready torched to burn,

Knowledge is known of prompt and tender grace.

“Open up!” calls the Spirit – winding up the shutters,

Startled at the difference the soul now attends,

Coursing through the veins Spirit’s power flutters,

Power for the healing, how the Spirit mends!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The best way to salvation is at the old life’s end. So many have found it that way. Jesus is the friend of all, but most poignant he’s the lover of the battler’s soul.

No matter our redemption story, Jesus knew us from the beginning. Even at a person’s height—with every sense of accomplishment ordered to their self-satisfied glee—Jesus knows the brokenness within that can call the person home to account at any time.

It’s such a blessing to know the inherent basis of our individual brokenness. Important beginnings can only be made at the behest of critical endings.

The Very Event of Salvation

What is made manifest by the third and fourth stanzas is all too real to the millions who’ve come to know the Christ of their hearts at the stark admission of their weaknesses and their dire dependence on God to get through.

The turn home is made.

Quickly then the Spirit gets to work on renovating the inner vestiges—those narrow halls and sinews of spiritual muscle facilitating new life, symbolised by a better hope than the false hopes of before; those ‘hopes’ that got us to hell in the first place.

Salvation isn’t always (for everyone) a one-off event. It may occur twice, a few times, even repeatedly. Indeed, some might say that it occurs any time we repent!

The signs of salvation feature as the urgent and unrelenting Presence of the Lord flushed through a solitary life—one human being. Whether it’s an event or a series of events from initial salvation or both is irrelevant.

The subject is just thankful for the difference God can make: the best sign of salvation.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Acknowledgement: to Michael W. Smith’s song, Signs, a pivotal song in my redemption story.