Falling Into Something Greater Than Myself

I fell off my chair. Literally.

When I regained consciousness, my eyes opened to a mosaic of the faces from my Bible study. They brought me juice and a blueberry muffin. As the study continued, I cringed in embarrassment. Little did I know that God was beginning a good work in me. 

Falling off my chair was Day One in Sanctification 101. When a person comes face-to-face with death, it’s not a bad time to ponder one’s purpose in life.

Prior to Day One, my sole purpose in life was me. My happiness. My pleasure. My fulfillment. You only live once, make the most of it! If that’s true, then when my body is lowered into the ground and the first shovelful of dirt tossed on my coffin, then that’s it. 

There is nothing more. Nothing more to life. It’s a sad thought. 

Why get out of bed if there is nothing more?

Every Cell Tells a Story

I look at my hands and think of all they have accomplished in over 50 years of blood running through my veins. Thump-bump, thump-bump. I feel the near-silent pulse of my heart pumping blood through my body; the assembly-line of iron-rich red blood cells swimming past the alveoli to pick up oxygen, which they will carry to every cell in my body. 

Oxygen is the necessary ingredient in combustion reactions, which provide the energy needed for me to think, walk, talk, type, read, move, and breathe. It’s kind of miraculous, if you ask me. But some will say we evolved and have no purpose.

A World That Points Beyond Itself

But it’s not just the miracle of the human body, but the miracle of the Maple tree outside my kitchen window. Without a heart, the tree’s xylem and phloem transport water, nutrients, and sugars throughout the tree. The fruit trees will produce blossoms, which birds and bees will assist in fertilizing, until we pick the ripe fruit and eat it; more energy for my body’s cells so I can think and walk and talk and type and read and move and breathe. It’s a miracle, if you ask me.

And our planet, Earth, on which these fruit trees grow, is 93 million miles from the sun. If we just happened to be 5 million miles closer to the sun, Earth would not be habitable. It would be a great sauna, too hot to sustain life. No xylem and phloem in trees producing fruit. No blood carrying oxygen to my cells. No life. Nothing. 

Lucky thing we’re just the right distance from the sun? No. Luck isn’t involved here, just a brilliant Creator. If you ask me, He’s a miracle worker. 

In His Image

And that brilliant Creator created me. I look in the mirror. It’s the same face I have seen every day for over 50 years. Looks pretty normal, yet I am created, “in the image of God.” I may not ‘look’ like God, but He created me with some of His attributes. 

I have a natural moral grounding, an innate knowledge of right and wrong. I desire relationship with others. I have intellect and the ability to reason. These are gifts from God, which are used to fulfill His purpose in my life.

But despite these gifts and my knowledge of right and wrong, I do not stand on a moral high ground. Every day, I get out of bed and sin. I sin in my words. I sin in my thoughts. I sin in my actions. 

If I had evolved, the one thing that should have been bred out of the DNA of humans is sin, but it never leaves. Every single person who has descended from Adam has the sin disease. Every person except Jesus.

Judgment, Mercy, and a Savior

God looked down at His sin-filled creation, making a mess of everything. When things got really bad, He destroyed every living thing on earth by flood, preserving only those on the ark. When things continued to go downhill, He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. And when things continued to crash and burn, He showered Mercy down upon us. 

He didn’t give us the punishment we deserved: death. Instead, He came down to Earth in the bodily form of Jesus Christ. The God-man. God Incarnate. God in the flesh.

Jesus lived a perfect life and died a sinner’s death. 

It is only a perfect sacrifice that can redeem a world of sinners, and that’s what He did. God allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross, begging forgiveness for those crucifying Him. It is my sin and your sin that held Him there. If there had been another way, Jesus would have taken it, but there was no other way. 

He died so that we may live. Eternally. With Him. In Heaven. Forever.

All we need to do is believe.

The Question of Faith

But, but, but…

I hear you.

It’s a leap of faith to believe that God came to Earth as a man and died on a cross to save me.

It’s also a leap of faith to say there is no God; that we were all created by random chance; that we just happen to have blood in our veins that has iron in it that picks up oxygen from our lungs and carries it to where it’s needed in our bodies; that we evolved from trilobites. The geological column verifies it, right?

I Know Where I Am Going

I lay flat on my back on the hospital bed, being wheeled into the surgery room, staring at the lights embedded in the ceiling. As I had my last conscious thoughts before the anesthesia kicked in, I knew it took more faith to be an atheist than a Christian.

If I didn’t survive the surgery, I knew where I was going.

That’s why I believe.

© 2026 Tessa Lind from Pursuing Perfection on Substack