awoke, trouble flared again.
rock, writhing with anger
footprints of the prowler who had stolen
dreaming head.
marked by fate
and woe
God.”
translation of Beowulf
The shrieking brakes of the car behind you bring your heart into your throat,
as you grip your wheel and wait for the impact on your bumper. But it doesn’t
come. The driver behind you looked up, saw your car stopped at the light, and
managed to slam on his brakes in time. Your breath comes out in a tight sigh
and your prayers of thanks fly to heaven as the light turns green and you drive
on. Ten minutes later you’ve almost forgotten the incident, and forgotten that
moment of fervent thanks breathed out to a sovereign God. When we see or feel a
danger averted our thanks are genuine and profuse. But what of the rest of our
lives, as we breathe and move in a world filled with dangers?
tread past the “sleeping dragon” and only the grace of God has kept us?
I was breezing through
portions of Beowulf this afternoon and those lines stopped me. The runaway
slave that slipped into the dragon’s lair (little guessing, it seems, that a
live dragon lurked still within) and carried the cup back to gain his master’s favor…
that man hardly guessed how close he had come a fiery demise. But as the
ancient author points out, how often do we walk glibly by dangers of our
own?
Living every day as we
do, it’s so easy to forget that it is a miracle we wake up at all. I’m not
trying to scare anyone here, or make you paranoid about getting out of bed, but
am only pointing out the reminder I got from an Old English poem today.
Don’t forget to thank
God for protecting you, even through the dangers you never knew lurked nearby.
And be glad your danger isn’t a sleeping dragon.
