No Other Rock

Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Rom. 1:7

Baxter first penned Awake, My Heart in 1960 and revised it in 1994.

I was not born until 1976, so I never experienced 1960 (or most of the 70’s) and I was about to enter my senior year in high school in 1994.

Ironically, 1994 was also the year I began to feel God’s pull on my life. I was involved in an accident that resulted in major head trauma and left me hospitalized for several days. Prior to that, I was chronically depressed. I felt like there was little to get out of life. I saw my final year of high school coming on and could see my close friends and I already going our separate ways. Looking back, it was probably the darkest time of my life.

After I was released from the hospital, I was even more confused. I knew there was a reason I was still alive (and with little lasting effects). But I simply couldn’t understand why? But I began to question issues of the soul.

One year and five days later, I became a Christian.

What strikes me about today’s devotional is the references that Baxter makes with regards to the age:

We are living in such times as never were before. Awful convulsions have shaken the world. Millions have died in recent world wars. Thrones have fallen. Sweeping changes have come. Science has now put into men’s hands powers of almost unlimited possibility either for racial good or racial destruction.

In 1960 or 1995, Baxter could never have seen 911 and the ensuing age of terror that followed. Baxter could not have seen the tsunamis and Hurricane Katrina. If you look for it, you can find video of Sadaam Hussein being hanged to death. Baxter probably would never have seen that coming either. And, as the debate of stem cells continues to be framed as the promise of possibility versus the prospect of damnation, we are forced to consider just how far we are going to go with respect to life.

And then there is “grace” and “peace” – two words that are the root of our needs, but often the most neglected.

Today, my prayer for you and I is that we will remember both grace and peace can be ours if we open our hearts and allow our Father inside.