Cold water feels warm when you’re freezing,

Cold hands feel warm when you’re lonely,

Death feels warm when the suffering subsides,

Or when reality takes its spindly fingers around your throat and chokes out the joy.

You drown in cold water and it feels warm and freezing simultaneously.

You drown in death and see darkness and day simultaneously.

What comes after, do you know?

Do cowards hang onto that last shred of life

Or do they plunge daringly into the dark?

Am I a coward for yet holding out hope?

And hope, that’s a funny thing.

What is hope without something to hope in?

And what is there to hope in beyond the blistering chill of this material universe?

Someone from Outside called me to hope, took me in a warm hand and gave me what I had never known before.

No longer do I want for death, nor fleeting life, but only for my Redeemer.