Wednesday 6 October 2010

Falling in Faith

Rachel was standing on the sofa and mummy, who stood behind her, created an oval around Rachel with her arms. She asked little Rachel, almost four years of age, "Do you dare to fall forward? Do you trust that I will catch you?" Rachel was all excited, giggling and then off she went. She kept her feet together, leaned forward and fell into the hands of her mother. Repeating this several times, even with her eyes closed as her mother told her to do, I decided to test her courage. I stood a metre in front of her and had my arms wide open, holding a cushion under my chin to cushion her fall. Without thinking, she just fell on me, over and over. 

I was amazed at how Rachel could take that lean forward while feeling no fear or showing any hesitation. She is so trusting and she did not ask how she should fall or analyse how to fall; she just fell. She needed no additional assurances that we would definitely catch hold of her to fully believe we would. She just believed. She did not worry that if she had closed her eyes, she would not be able to see where she was falling. She just obeyed.

How often do we face similar situations as that of Rachel, being asked to fall? Do we allow ourselves to just fall or do we hold back, calculate our risks, contemplate, etc? How often has our Lord asked us to close our eyes, trust in His mighty and loving hands, and without hesitation or reservation, just simply fall right into His arms? Do we not know who this Jesus is? Are we not yet convinced of His faithfulness to us that we still lack the courage to let go of ourselves and let God "catch" us? How often do we find ourselves fighting for control over our lives and refusing God's entry to freely lead and guide us without our expectations and demands, and  allow Him to influence our daily choices? If it is all about us, then... what about God? 

We build up our lives and in adulthood especially, we enjoy more successes than suffer failures. In the midst of these, we also build up our walls of pride in a world named "me-only"; It is all about me. And then when we meet with life crises, and we turn to God in desperate prayer, God affirms us that He will stay with us and lead us; He will make a way when there seems to be no way. And then He asks us to trust in Him completely in our moments of tribulations, to just "fall" right into His arms. How can we possibly do that now when we have been so familiar with attributing everything to our own power and filling our minds and hearts with self-centred expectations and demands? No, until we can let go of ourselves, until we close our eyes, keep our feet together and just fall in complete trust, there is no way God can enter and fill our lives. There is no way that God can be God in our lives unless we denounce the false idol called "myself". This false idol gives nothing but insecurity and precisely so, do we who worship this idol feel insecure and unwilling to trust. 

Like Rachel, once we have shut out all "noises" and just choose to trust, we will keep falling and falling, being caught one time after another, and we will be laughing and giggling, all excited and secure that we are always in good hands.

06 October 2010
10.16pm

2 comments:

  1. Tat's y God said we need to be like kids to enter his Kingdom.

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  2. Reminds me of games we used to play at church camps: Trust Walk where we just allow people to lead us while we are blindfolded and Trust Fall(my own title) where we fall backwards from a height on our group who will catch us.

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