Drowning

With his shirt plastered to his chest, the six year old boy who had been fishing with his sister and father tried desperately to keep his head above the water. His pants were soaked with the dirty brown lake water and the extra weight pulled him under. If he had time to regret he may have felt sorry for not listening to his dad warn him to stay close by. Staying alive was more pressing than regret. The swirls of water washed around his head and the long deep stems from the lily pads wrapped around his arms and legs making it nearly impossible to stay afloat. He tasted the bitter water as he opened his mouth desperately wide for air. His attempts for oxygen brought more water into his stinging nose and throat. Scrambling to the surface he tried to scream, but his cry for help only proved to give him another mouthful of the dirty lake. Fortunately his eleven-year-old sister was nearby and capable of a more than healthy scream.

Down below the water again, and then with little legs frantically kicking he faught back up. It was then that he opened his burning eyes to see something he would never forget. As a photo in his mental album, this picture would forever stay with him. There on the shore, running along the slanted hill that ringed the lake, came his daddy. The sight of him casting off cumbersome articles of clothing, zigzagging between trees, pushing through thick branches and shedding knots of tangled fishing line took on the mystique of a man taking off his glasses and shirt to reveal a large “S” and a billowing red cape. In an instant the man was wet and the boy quickly found himself safely in the arms of his father. Through it all, the man never took his eyes off his sinking son.
Forever, the son remembers.

There is another who remembers. He recalls being pinned to a wooden cross where he waited for death to creep slowly and excruciatingly into his beaten body. He remembers the morning turning into day as he and his two companions slipped into the approaching darkness. He remembers the tears that were shed by the woman standing at the base of the next splintery death post. But most of all he can’t forget the voices. The collective voice of the mob was burned in his mind as it screamed hatred and scorn till hearts burned furious and throats burned raw. He remembers the voice of a dying thief as he ridiculed out of fear and selfishness, “If you are the Messiah, save yourself, and us.”

But then time gets jumbled and his memory a little hazy, like the world suddenly started spinning and speeding by too fast. He recalls saying something, but it takes a while to match thought with word. He remembers trying to defend the man who hung between him and the blasphemous thief. He recalls making a hopeless request. He, a man who had sinned his entire life and who had come to this wretched and deserved end approached the man from Nazareth with a plea that could only come from a drowning man. Drowning in sin, drowning in pain and drowning in death he made a very simple plea. “Teacher,” he said looking to the ground past his blood soaked feet, “Teacher, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

The response could have been the worst rejection the man had ever suffered; it should have been. Instead he was given the greatest gift of his life. He was thrown the lifeline for his soul. The drowning man was pulled from the gaping mouth of the grave.

With dried blood on his cracked lips, the forgiving voice of Jesus uttered words that will forever play through the man’s mind. “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” And with those words Jesus dove into the man’s sinful heart and pulled him out of the black waters of spiritual death. There was an instant when Jesus was wet with blood and cold with the sins of others; an instant when the sinful drowning man found himself safely in the arms of his Savior.

The same Jesus who spoke those words on that cross makes the same promise to all who choose to live for him today, and paradise waits. Through it all, He never takes his eyes off his sinking, struggling children.

Tom