As I experienced a growth spurt in my early teens, I became a maladroit athlete. Another word for maladroit is clumsy. I learned how to stumble without serious injury by learning to hit and roll. In fact, I made it an art, which was a great attribute to possess—being a practice dummy for the senior high football team that kicked and knocked me around quite regularly.
Shouldering five-foot
sticks of pine trees, called paper wood or pulpwood, and walking in the woods
through honeysuckle vines and saw briars were great learning tools for the art
of stumbling. It is amazing how many of nature’s creeping plants can grab hold
of size-twelve boots. Stumbling with a large stick of paper wood, you learn
quickly how to fall without serious injury. The weight of the timber was
backbreaking enough.
I remember one
night during my junior year in high school I intercepted a pass and headed for
a touchdown. I had two blockers, who should have been blocking, alongside me as
I headed for the end zone. The only man to beat was the quarterback, and he was
behind us. He chased, and, at the last minute, dove to catch the tip of my
right cleat. I stumbled, falling short of the end zone. I went rolling head
over heels like a ball. We did not score and eventually lost 14–13. I watched
the play on film, and the quarterback barely touched the tip of my toe. Have
you noticed that it is the little things that trip us?
Most people who
stumble will jump up readily and look to see if someone is watching. The other
day I stumbled on one of the boards I use for a ramp into my tool shed. It has
flipped me on several occasions, but I have always landed on my feet—that is, until
the moment when my neighbor was watching. The board tilted, throwing me toward
the shed. Wanting to preserve my face—actually not wanting any more scars—I
used the poise of a ballet dancer to turn while flying through the air toward a
host of scar-making items. With the grace of a meteorite striking the earth,
and the sound of an elephant falling into a room full of brass cymbals, I
miraculously landed sitting upright inside the garage door.
Thinking the
moment could have earned me a spot for the grand prize on
One Memorial Day,
Bill, my good friend and minister of music at a former church, took my son
Aaron and me fishing on a slough converted into a lake on the
I became concerned
about the size of the boat for the three of us. Bill assured me that it was big
enough, as we bypassed a larger one. Bill would be running the trolling motor,
so he wanted a boat he could navigate more easily.
We put the boat in
the water, and again I questioned the size of the boat compared to the size of the
three of us. Bill said, “Preacher, you get in first; Aaron can sit in the
middle, and I will sit on the front.”
Slowly I
maneuvered my way to the back, thinking a floating boat is an accident waiting
to happen, and trying not to stumble and fall into a cold lake. I had already
experienced stumbling on a rebar on a bridge and falling backward—while holding
and bending two rebars—into a muddy creek where the high temperature for the
day was fourteen degrees. Did you know that cold water would take your breath?
Very carefully, I
made my way to the back of the dinghy (small boat), and as I sat on the bench
the water came within an inch of the rim of the top of the boat. I told Bill I
thought we needed the bigger boat. He assured me that it would be okay, and he
told Aaron to get in. Aaron, size-fifteen boot, tripped on the ice chest
between the front and middle seats and fell into my lifted and outstretched
arms. I broke his fall and kept him out of the lake, but the dinghy sank to the
bottom of the lake with me holding my precious baby boy in my arms. I had
visions of the sinking of the Titanic. For a moment I knew how the Egyptians
must have felt when the
Bill, holding the
rope to the boat—humming, I think, Taps—bent over with laughter, fell to the
ground, and rolled on the bank laughing to the high heavens. Aaron made excuses
for stumbling, and we became the other famous Soggy Bottom Boys. We were not
men of constant sorrows, but men who got the bigger boat and had a great day of
fishing, teasing, and laughing—with soggy bottoms.
“We all stumble in many ways.” (James 3:2a, NIV)
Now to Him who is able to keep them
from stumbling,
and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory in great joy. To the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, and now, and
for evermore. Amen. (Jude
24–25, American Standard Version)
What is you first reaction when you
stumble?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
How do you react when someone of faith has
a moral stumble?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Our first reaction when someone stumbles is to help him or
her to his or her feet, but it is better to examine for serious injury first. What
do you think?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Prayer: The Bible
reminds us that all fall short of Your glory. Stumbling is part of life. Thank You
for people who have helped me when I stumble. Thank You for helping me when
there was no one to prevent me from stumbling. Praise be to our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for stumbling.
No comments:
Post a Comment