Keep Falling

I can still picture the scenario. My friend urged me to go over a relatively easy jump on my mountain bike. I couldn´t resist the challenge in her voice and sped up towards it. It was in mid-air that I realized I hadn´t really calculated my landing and I was pretty much headed for a large ditch to the right. Either way I knew I was going to be unsuccessful in staying upright with my bike. With my inexperience, I´d either crash into the ditch or crash trying to swerve away from it. 

The feeling of falling through the air lasted only a split second. But in that second I winced and braced myself for the impact.

Lately, the falling sensation has come back more than once. The feeling of having my assumptions, my petty ideals, and my comfortable self-image being snatched out from under me. I look up at the starry sky and realize that I´m not what I thought I was. Just like that…the ground disappears beneath me and I am falling!

It´s disconcerting. It´s humbling to know that I have so many platforms of complacency and self-delusion to fall off of as I try to earnestly seek God. I often cry as I fall—tears that taste of both remorse and relinquishment. I don´t like the falling sensation. It´s intimidating not knowing how or when I´m going to land. As gravity pulls me downward, I sometimes begin to think that God must have forgotten me. I brace myself to be hurt. 

The impact surprises me every time. For some strange reason, I land gently on a rough, solid structure. My arms cling to the warm wood that has stopped my fall through space. It is a cross. It is the cross where justice and mercy embraced. It is the cross where true love won. It is the cross where Jesus and I can be one. It is the cross where death means the promise of new life.

My heart relaxes. This landing was nothing like I had imagined. Just as I was fairly unscathed from the tumble on my bike, this is a safe place to fall. I don´t mind falling onto the cross—onto the efficacy of heaven´s ultimate sacrifice. I don’t mind even dying here. I don´t mind being impacted by genuine love.

Again the cross catches me and my plea becomes, “Keep me falling…falling on love…falling into love…falling deeper into my Savior’s heart.”