Derek Russell
Contributing columnist
Over the warm summer months, I’ve grown into the habit of walking outside in the morning for half an hour at a pretty fast pace. More recently, it’s been cold and dark in my time set aside for exercise. Last week as I was walking quickly in the pre-dawn darkness, my foot caught on the front edge of an uneven slab of concrete sidewalk, and down I went. My first thought, naturally, was about who was around me to guffaw at my clumsiness. (If you were the one driving by me, you are welcome for that moment of serendipitous glee.) My bruised pride faded over another concern, however, on whether I would be able to walk home or not.
I got up, adrenaline pumping, and kept going, only becoming aware of the bloody gash on the side of my knee after a few steps. I’d managed to scrape the top layer of skin off a couple inches of my knee. I limped home the rest of the way, blood dripping down my leg, hoping for some sympathy from my wife and maybe some medical attention — she is a registered nurse after all. What I have learned about R.N.’s in general is that they are not all that comforting about my garden-variety scrapes, bruises, and boo-boos. Perhaps it is over-exposure on their part – they spend all day and night with people in real pain, so the rest of it is met with a gallows kind of humor. True to form, my wife’s statement when I told her how I hurt myself was, “Isn’t that what old guys do?” Yes, apparently it is, this old guy included.
I’ve begun thinking about the possible moral of the story — that is a professional hazard for pastors, finding morals in just about every occurrence of life. Here are some of the options I’ve come up with:
*It hurts too much to exercise, so avoid it at all cost.
*You might as well laugh at yourself – everyone else is.
*Take your beard trimmer and shave your hairy knee before you put on the bandage, or you’ll scream like a little girl when it comes off (no offense to little girls intended).
*Pick your feet up when you walk, stupid!
*When you fall, it is a gift that keeps on giving. It takes some time for the pain to show up in various places in your body.
*You may be under the delusion that you are younger, but the amount of time it takes to heal will teach you otherwise.
These possible morals of the story don’t seem all that spiritual, and this is supposed to be a religious column after all. Is there a spiritual moral of the story? Well, did you know that the Bible likens sin to falling? The writer of Hebrews encourages us to “strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” (12:1)
If life is a race and heaven is the finish line, sin is something that entangles our legs or sticks up from the sidewalk to trip us up and make us fall. You can’t run very well if you are tripping and falling all the time, and you might fall down one too many times and never get back up again to finish the race you are supposed to run. Sin keeps us from running the way we should.
So, what are those things, those sins, that have the potential to trip us up not only once but over and over again? Some of the sins are really obvious, Ten Commandment kinds of stuff. You shouldn’t murder people, or worship a golden idol, or commit adultery with your neighbor’s wife, or go into a court of law and lie about someone to get them into trouble. Of course, the Ten Commandments point to spiritual realities that may fall short of the actual acts described but are damning nevertheless. You may not have murdered someone, but you might hate someone. Or maybe other things take a central place in your life instead of God. Or maybe you don’t cross the actual line of seducing someone’s wife, but in your heart of hearts you sure want to. And by the way, you don’t have to give testimony in a court case in order to be a liar.
I know that with any human being, there are certain “besetting” sins that are particularly tempting. It could be greed, or the need to get revenge, or lust, or jealousy, or stirring up trouble for someone by spreading gossip. There are all kinds of sins that may tempt me but not you, and vice versa. What the verse in Hebrews says is that every time we give into sin, it’s like tripping over something and going down hard on a concrete sidewalk. I bruise and batter myself spiritually every time I give into some urge that I know I am not supposed to.
So, what’s the moral of my story of falling down? It could be along these lines:
*When you sin intentionally, you are damaging your soul.
*Like any wound, spiritual wounds take time to heal.
· When you fall, it’s best not to wallow around in it. Pick yourself up, or more exactly, let God pick you up through his grace.
*Falling doesn’t have to define you. It’s what you do after you fall that counts.
I know that God has grace for me when I sin, but I also know I shouldn’t just keep on sinning and use God’s grace as an excuse for it. I have no intention of tripping myself repeatedly and unnecessarily every time I take a walk. That would be foolish (and painful). Rather, I want to walk, and maybe even run, in the way that I should, knowing that God in his mercy is with me every step of the way.
Derek Russell is pastor of the Hillsboro Global Methodist Church. He loves Jesus, family, dogs and football.
