I Walk The Line

Johnny Cash was in love with his wife June. Out of his heart of love for June he sang to her, “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep the ends out for the tie that binds, because you’re mine, I walk the line.”

We often are impressed by young gymnasts who can walk the balance beam–poised and focused, successfully ending their routine with a firm landing that awaits our applause.

For each one of us to “walk the line” we must intimately and constantly allow God to mark the path for our lives.

On Saturday, feeling lonely with grief and struggling to put together a message for Sunday morning, I went to a favorite spot of my late husband, Pastor George, by the waterfront. I could not soothe my emotional needs–even after two years of living alone. As I left, I was irritated by a young boy washing my car windshield at the red light. I knew at that moment I was not walking the line. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and a failure that I was so caught up in my own grief that I could not even show a little bit of love to a street boy. All of my productive days filled with meetings at the office or church, and making gifts of cake and biscotti could not change my utter human disgust of myself for not walking my line.

Thank God, early the next morning on my way to church, in repentance, I went to the same traffic light intersection and found two street boys who washed my car windshield. With great joy I blessed them with pesos (money). I walked the line.

In the Bible, in Daniel, chapter 3, we have an example of three men who walked the line. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

understood the king’s command to bow down to the golden image (9’ wide and 90’ tall) at the sound of the music. They would not bow. The king explained to them the law. Again, they would not bow. The punishment for not bowing to the image was to be thrown in a fiery furnace. The king was provoked with their disobedience and had the furnace fired up seven times hotter than usual.

The three Hebrew boys claimed deliverance from their God and even if they were not delivered, they vowed they would not bow to the golden image. In minutes, the king was calling them out of the fiery furnace without a hair lost.

They knew the line and they walked the line! Not only did God deliver them–dayenu (the Hebrew word meaning it would have been enough), but God promoted them! The king praised their God, and the king decreed a law for all to honor their God.

What is your line? What has God asked you to do?

Matthew 3:2 says that God has asked us to turn from our sins, and to turn to Him. We are also persuaded in Romans 12:1 to offer our lives to God as a living sacrifice. For some of us, we try to put part of our lives on the altar while the rest is squirming or hanging off on one side.

Walk the line.

When you love God, it is because of His love that you not only walk the line, you can finish poised on the balance beam of life. Because God is mine, I walk the line.

~Jeanne DeTellis