Rising to My Own Fall

As a biologist, I understand the life cycle God has put in place to keep this broken biosphere limping along with the appearance of renewed life, season after season.  Okay I’m not officially a biologist, but I would have been if I matriculated my first interest of study to its prescribed end, but I didn’t.  Arm-chair science, like arm-chair theology, can be risky when run on human trials without proper consent.  I digress.

When we live the course of life set before us, with its entire set of unforeseen pitfall and hairpin turns, we tend to think “that’s just life.”  But I think it’s not.  I think there is much more going on than meets the naked eye or experience.

I believe that everything in life, pain or pleasure, are found in the hand of God as instruments for the good of any and all who experience them.  Yet from the wayward to the most forward, God is working His will and good pleasure, but that’s not how we usually see it (or feel it).

We live to rise, to improve, to get better and have more – or we just live in mediocrity, but either way we usually don’t understand that aiming at a higher place will likely end in a lower state; if we don’t understand the path to the divine promise.

Rising to My Own Fall is the common basis for advance within the Kingdom, for if I desire to be first, I must be last.  If I desire life I must die.  If I desire strength I must be weak.  If I desire to be served I must first serve.  If I desire to lead I must follow.  If I desire to be lifted up I must first be brought low.

Do you see the pattern?  Do you realize that the greatest summit you can climb is that of your own admission to human depravity?

Don’t get me wrong.  This is not about vane self-deprecation or faking self-effacement – simply to get or to gain.  But it’s about an honest appraisal of who we are – without Him.  Who we are at the core was never good until redemption.

So the next time you aspire to a greater anything – without a genuine assessment of Who it is that gets you there – take heed.  For in Rising to My Own Fall did there alone I realized the fallacy in flesh and self-sufficiency.  May you too discover this Kingdom mystery so often glossed over for more appealing tones of self-righteousness and indulgence – all in the name of free grace and love.

Rising to My Own Fall – just might be the best thing that ever happened to me.  But only as I see my path in the rear-view mirror of life, am I aware of the Hand that guided every step of the way.