Visiting the Grand Canyon,
I stretched out on a flat rock
and inched forward
until my head was over the edge.
I looked down into miles of emptiness.

My brain said,
"Ninety-five percent of you
is secure on the rock."
My spirit–dizzy and unseated–said, 
"You will fall–are falling,
plummeting toward nothingnes,
toward extinction."

Odd, unexpected, existential moment,
clarifying and expansive.

God offers these moments daily,
and we avoid them as surely
as we avoid stepping to the Canyon's rim.

But God's hand,
gentle in the small of my back,
urges me forward toward the brink,
toward the possible,
toward the exquisitely epiphanic,
    eye-popping, breath-stopping plunge.

Why back away?

Text and image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All
rights reserved.