Hi Doves,     This was sent to me by a friend whose cousin wrote it and sent it to her.  Carolyn G. 

Up Above the World So High

 When I was a kid of a boy, which wasn’t so long ago, my big brother Roger built a tree house way up in an old oak tree in the edge of the woods near our home.  I don’t know how he got the boards up there, but he was five years older than me and capable of wonderful feats.  The tree house was really just a platform of boards nailed across two big limbs that stuck out from the trunk at the same juncture.  My brother Denis was three years younger than me, and we pined to climb up into that tree house, but both Mama and Roger had strictly forbidden it.  One day when Roger was away from home, maybe gone with Daddy to the mill or on some other errand, Denis and I happened to wander near the tree house as we played.  We looked longingly at it and thought how great it would be to view the world from such a height.  I decided that I could quickly nip up the tree, take a look down on the world for a few minutes, and sneak back down, with no one the wiser.  Roger had driven big spike nails into the tree, protruding about three inches to form climbing steps, since there were no low limbs on the big trunk.  It was actually easier than I expected to shinny up on those spikes, and I was soon atop the tree house platform.  It was great!  Then I looked down.

From the ground, the tree house appeared to be about twenty-five feet high, but when I looked down from the platform, I could see that it was actually closer to a quarter of a mile above the earth.  A cloud or two drifted between me and the ground, and my brother Denis looked like an ant.  I wanted to climb down, but I was too terrified even to begin.  My whole life flashed before my eyes, and, young as I was, that didn’t take long.  I wondered if I would have to spend my life up there, if we could find a long enough rope to send food up to me, and how I could meet a wife and raise a family there when I grew up.  There was only one thing to do, and I did it.

“Go to the house and get Mama!” I called down to Denis.

 That shows how desperate I was.  In the first place, my crime would be found out.  Even more to the point, I knew in my heart that Mama couldn’t do anything.  She was too heavy and unathletic to climb the tree, and even if she could climb it, she certainly couldn’t carry me back down with her.  However, Mama did come, and Mama did get me down.  I am not typing this in a tree house.    Do you know how she did it?  She talked me down.  I don’t remember what she said, but she talked enough of my fear away to get me to follow her step-by-step instructions about where to hold on and where to put my foot to find the first spike, so that soon I was safely beside her. Through my disobedience I got myself into a fix I could not get out of, and Mama extricated me purely by the power of her words.

This was a signal event that I have thought of many times.  It was an early lesson in the might of words and the power of the spirit.  I thought my rescue required a physical agent that could lower me to the ground, but I was saved by non-physical means, by nothing but vanishing words and the spirit of the mother’s love behind them.  The course of history has been changed for good or ill innumerable times by words written or spoken.  Words can bring to safety the man on the ledge or the airplane with a disabled pilot.  They can break or mend a family or a friendship.  Words can stir us to war and sooth us in peace. Words are powerful, and the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.   I got some inkling of the power of words long ago in a tree house.

But, if man’s puny words are this dynamic, think how powerful God’s words are.  When I say “God’s words,” I am thinking of the three manifestations of His words.

In the Bible we have God’s written word.  Paul recognized how important the scriptures are.  In Romans chapter 9, he lists about eight important blessings God has given to the Jews, but earlier, in chapter 3, where Paul singles out only one of those blessings to mention as the great advantage of the Jews, he says that “they have been entrusted with the very word of God,”  (Rom. 3:2) meaning that the Jews were the custodians of the scriptures.  We have in the Bible the things that the Maker of the universe wants to tell us.  Timothy says, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”  (Tim. 3: 16-17)   As my mama’s words took me step by step out of my plight as a little boy, so God’s word takes us step by step from a hell-bound plight to a heaven-bound solution.  God’s word gives us wisdom, helps us grow and become righteous, but most of all it leads us to life.

The second manifestation of God’s word is His creative word.  By the very power of his word he spoke the universe into existence, and by the power of his creative word he keeps it functioning--as Hebrews 1: 2 says, “sustaining all things by his mighty word.”   God’s creation was completely good when He spoke it into existence, but sin has contaminated it.  I read one physicist’s rather far-out opinion that entropy, or the gradual breakdown of the universe is caused by sin corrupting the laws of physics.  Whatever the reason, God must keep the universe operating by a constant infusion of his creative power.  Astronomers do detect energy entering our universe from an undetermined source.   The creative word provides all that is necessary for our physical life.

The third manifestation is God’s incarnate word, namely Jesus Christ.  I love the passage from John: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”   (John 1: 14)  God’s word incarnate is “God with us.”  God became a man, suffered and died as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose again to reign forever.  The God-Man-Word-of-God offers us the answer to all our dreams and hopes.  If we acknowledge Him, submit our sins to Him, and allow Him to take charge of our lives, He will give us life in return.

God’s word in every manifestation gives life.

--Mark D. Meadows