Sometimes God shows us things months—even years—before they have meaning to us. It is only in retrospect that we begin to say “oh.” A few years back I began seeing this scene in my Spirit. Only I was the woman in the picture, and the metal was not part of a boat rigging but rather an actual hook, large and sturdy and deeply imbedded in my chest as it lifted me up and out. I did not resist, but rather hung limp, yielding, trusting, not unlike the woman in this picture. The scene travelled across my psyche, my soul, from time to time over the past few years, a season that has been marked with tumult and blessing. The painting was not unfamiliar to me. I had used it once in The Renaissance Service. When the visions started coming I tried to track it down, but could not remember the name or the artist—the slide was, curiously, missing from my collection. This morning I woke up and saw it all. The hook was gone. I had been delivered to the new shore. And the name of the artist and the painting was in my mind clear as day: The Life Line.
This very day God is speaking to us all, maybe in words, maybe in pictures, maybe in some faint dawning we must choose whether to lean into—or continue hiding from. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:15)
God has a plan. May we learn to be like putty in his hands that he may rescue and deliver us our whole life long— and into the next.
by Winslow Homer
Heather Choate Davis 