ALIVE at the DEAD end

The dead end is often also a dreaded end. I have always wondered why sometimes we must reach that point of desperation before any intervention would come! Humanly I will prefer to help earlier if I will help at all. Yet I can count one thing after the other when I have been stretched to breaking point and then there comes my help. What a joy and relief it brings, what a memory it leaves with me.

The man Abraham was stretched till he raised his knife to kill his own only son and end all his hopes and dreams of becoming the father of nations. And then, the voice spoke out, do not kill your son and he lifted his eyes and so a ram caught in a thicket (Genesis 22:13), Many of us would have failed at the point where Isaac looks into the face of his father and asks, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" (Genesis 22:7), that question was a spear thrashed into the heart of a father who knew the bitter truth, too bitter and hard to tell his victim who happens to be his son.

When I got out of job some years back I decided to seek God for his pathway, at that point my daughter was 10 years old and if you have a child that age you know how candid they can be. She comes to me and says, Dad now that you are not working, we are going to be poor and I cannot give you a list of things I need for school and for myself. What a spear thrust in my heart! I gave her an Abrahamic answer, Daughter all the time, even when I had a job your provision was coming from God the father through me, God the father has not lost a job he will still provide for all your lists.

Who waits for the last-minute help? Who hangs in there no matter what? To be real, many a time this is a test we all fail, we fail because we feel it is not fair, we feel we can improvise, we feel so pressured.

Our earlier hero Abraham, had actually failed his first test, at an old age he waited to have a child, it reached a dead end, because his wife was biologically dead, at the dead end they felt they should take the matter into their hands and do something “ to help God out” so Abraham slept with Sarah’s maid and got a son, Ishmael who was to be a constant bitter reminder of the effects of reactions and lack of faith when we arrive at the dead end.

Our perfect example at whom we must fix our eyes was seeing the dead end right ahead of him, dead ends can be dark, painful, and isolating. His dead end was not hunger, poverty or sickness, his dead end was also death end an excruciatingly painful shameful death. When Jesus cries out, if possible, take this cup from me, he hastens to add not my will but your will be done. Even when our dead end has a death end, let us still call to his will because he has resurrection power!

You have not been tempted beyond what is common to man and in every temptation, he puts there a way for escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). Dead ends are dreaded ends, yet the Lord is squeezing out of us the best wine, purifying our gold just like the sweat of gethsemane which was like drops of blood incubating your and my life (Luke 22:44). Watch the space at your dead ends, life is budding.

When the Red Sea was a dead end, the enemy was approaching, there was no way to cross, and it could better be called a death sea, yet waters departed and the Israelites crossed, at that dead end the enemy died and Gods people lived on beyond the dead end.

Hang in there at the dead end, the ram is in the thicket, hang in there at the dead end the stone will be rolled off the grave, hang in there at the dead end, the red sea will give way, by this time next year, your Isaac will be born! Hang in there at the dead end you will be alive.

Eugene