Underneath, the everlasting arms

There is a particular terror the body knows before the mind can even name it: the instant of falling. The floor that was solid under you a heartbeat ago is simply gone, your stomach drops, your arms fly out grasping for anything at all, and there is nothing there to hold. And then, against every fear, the catch, the moment your weight, which was plummeting toward the ground, is suddenly held and stops. Picture now an old man with his life nearly spent, gathering around him a people he has carried across forty years of wilderness, and giving them his very last words. Moses will not see the land they are walking into. He cannot go in with them. So he hands them something to stand on for whatever is coming, and it is this: the eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Underneath. Below the lowest point a person can possibly fall to, there is something waiting, and it is not a hard floor that breaks the body on impact. It is arms. They are already there, spread wide, lower than any fall can reach.

Maybe the worst of your upheaval felt exactly like that first instant, the floor itself gone, falling with nothing to grab and no bottom in sight. Hear Moses' last blessing as spoken for precisely that fear. Underneath are the everlasting arms. Below the lowest you can possibly fall, there is not a hard landing waiting to break you, but arms that hold, and they are always farther down than your falling goes. You may not have felt them in the drop; falling rarely feels like being held until the catch comes. But they were there the whole time. They caught you, and they have not let go since. Let this settle into the place in you that is still afraid of falling again: there is no bottom to your fall that is lower than the arms of God. He did not push you off the ledge; that was never His doing. But He was underneath when you went over it, and He is underneath still, and He always will be.