Stuck in the middle

It’s the middle that I seem to spend most of my time fighting for. You know the highs and the lows, the mountaintops and the valleys, the ups and the downs. What about the middle? Are you raising up out or are you on your way down? Can you choose the way? Think about it for a minute.

The first poem I remember learning was “The Grand Old Duke of York”.

“The Grand old Duke of York, he has ten thousand men. He marched them up a very high hill and he marched them down again. And when they were up they were up. And when they were down they were down. And when they were only half way up, they were neither up nor down.”

But is it really the middle? How high do you have to be to be out of the middle? Or how low do you have to fall to be below it? And if so how wide is the middle for the other ends?

At the distant beginning you have a piece of coal, oddly shaped, uncreative and beyond unclean. When handled it will leave behind a visible and most often an unseen presence. All the time making its self-useful if exposed to flame.

Knowing that far away along the line of time you have a diamond that having been exposed to outwardly unbearable pressure and then after being touched by the master’s hand is exquisite and priceless. And being exposed to true sunlight is beauty as it was designed to be.

And then there in the middle over looked and often set-aside, you find a rock. To most it’s not of much use. It won’t burn, has little, if any value and not much to look at.

This is where I seem to find myself much of the time. Not even close to being a diamond and to far along to give off heat, a rock!

Yet wasn’t it a simple rock that brought Goliath down? Didn’t God bring fresh water out of a rock for the children of Israel?

I’m still doing a lot of thinking about this, so I don’t have many answerable thoughts. But I would love to hear yours.
Peace and Blessings, Dave