Watching my 1 year old walk around outside made me think of us as believers in Christ. My son walks a few steps and then hits a slippery spot and stumbles, then falls. He gets back up to walk some more, then tries to manage the unstable terrain, then wobbles and falls again. He then sits awhile and sees the dirt on his hands, his pants, his ankles and his backside, waits for help from his father (that’s me) and then slowly gets back up again to try the maneuvering of thick grass, another unstable terrain. Failure again….
Then, just then he gets to the smooth path where the vehicles and dogs have made the ground level and safe, then he hasn’t any difficulty walking, even the whole length of a football field occasionally!
Isn’t that how it is with our Christian Walk sometimes?
We seek to understand the walk despite of our fallen attempts, yet we stand up to meet another challenge, to walk another step, to traverse another unfamiliar territory? We walk, we stumble, we fall and get up again. We fall because of gravity, we land because of God’s grace. You see sometimes we don’t see God’s hand in our landings. We just get angry and sit awhile until the Father has to help us up again.
We wrestle with demons just like the stubborn, dried up grass that clings to your clothes or the hardened points of needles that prick your skin and leave their poison underneath the surface. We sit and try to remove the dirt of guilt, the rocks of stubbornness, the poison of temptation, the needles of sin, the embedded gravel of heartache. The more we try, the more those things get stuck and unable to remove and we find ourselves restricted to attempt new and unstable paths….. Then they fester and grow and we allow our failures to suck the marrow out of our vision, our destiny, and eventually our legacy. We wrestle with insecurity, we toy with our “calling”, we feed from the slop of failure and think about the Prodigal Son who said, “Even the servants in my father’s house are eating better than me” (Luke 15: 17-18)
We wish we hadn’t fallen at all.
And yet, through our fallen state, we are not in a forgotten state. God the Father has remembered our name and has promised “never to leave us, never to forsake us.” He is there in the trenches with us as we are wanting escape from the trenches around us. He is there when we cry, “Abba, Father, Daddy, Dad…..Help me!” Just when we are saying that he will not come or that he will not dare be seen with filth and grime, God shows up! Praise the Father because he loved us and still does despite our feeble attempts at our walk.
Just as my son looks to me for a help- to walk in new paths and venture forth to new scenery....... so we must seek our Heavenly Father for help in doing the things we cannot, walking "by faith and not by sight."
II Corinthians 5: 7 (NASB)
