On Falling Down
To me, the most amazing event in all of sports is not the Superbowl or pitching a perfect game. The most amazing event is the high jump. In a world class high jump, the competitor runs up and jumps over a bar that is higher than the top of the front door of your house. I just don’t understand how that is possible. It is not like he grabs it and pulls himself over it, he completely jumps over it. In 1993 one man jumped over a bar that was over eight feet high! That means he could jump over your ceiling. That is amazing.
If that is an amazing feat, one of the most amazing facts is that the high jump always ends in failure. They keep raising the bar until the competitor can not jump it anymore. He walks away with the bar on the ground and he has failed.
I’m glad God doesn’t do me like that. I’m glad he doesn’t keep changing the bar to make me fail. God is on my side. As a Christian, we keep trying until we succeed. We do fail. We fall down, but we keep getting up again and again. Finally we get up one more time than we have fallen down.
The wise man said, “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again,
but the wicked are brought down by calamity.” (Prov 24:16). God does not expect perfection from us. He expects us to keep on trying. He knows we will fall down. He expects us to get up again. When we do fall down, the real test of Christianity begins. If we get up and try again, we are righteous. If we fall and quit trying, if we just lay there in our failure, then we have failed the righteousness test.
Dear Brother or Sister, have you failed? Have you stumbled? Have you fallen down? Get up again. In Biblical literature the number seven is usually not a literally number, but rather stands for a number that means “an unlimited number of times.” God is really saying to us, “As many times as you fall down, a righteous person will get up again.”
It is not how many times you fall that counts. It is how many times you get up that makes the difference.
Lonnie Davis
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