Dear Friends,
If I could have run away and joined the circus as a little boy I would have been a lion tamer. I remember being in our large backyard on a hot summer day. I was strutting around in front of six stuffed tigers and lions sitting on cardboard boxes that I'd arranged in a circle around me. I had a kitchen chair to be used as a shield in case one tried to attack me and a whip that I cracked over their heads as I ordered them through their paces. While I showed no fear to the beasts, I was lucky to get out of there alive. I say that because my sister would have killed me if she'd found me messing with her stuffed animals.
When I was very young, my grandmother took me to the circus and I remember the most terrifying act was not the lion tamer in the big cage with the ferocious lions and tigers. It was the death-defying trapeze artists! I just knew that at any moment one of them would fall the 100 feet to the floor below.
If you're a trapeze artist you're a “flyer” or a “catcher.” The flyer jumps off a platform while hanging from a swing. As he or she soars overhead, the catcher is hanging from his knees on another trapeze swing and he starts the downward arc. At an exact point, the flyer lets go of the swing and continues in the arc created by the momentum from the swing. Now, in a matter of milliseconds, gravity is going to take over and the flyer will start to fall to earth. But with split second timing, the catcher meets the flyer in mid-air. The catcher wraps his hands around the flyer's wrists and they both swing back to the platform. A one second delay means the difference between being safely caught or falling.
I read an interview given by a trapeze artist who performed in a German circus. Here’s what the “flyer” said, “The public thinks I'm the star of the act, but the real star is Joseph the catcher. He has to be there with split-second precision and grab me out of the air. When I fly to Joseph I have to just simply stretch out my arms and wait for him to catch me. The worst thing I can do is to try to grab for him. I can do nothing but just stretch out my arms and have faith that he will meet me at the right moment and grab me.”
That last statement really caught my attention because that's the faith we need to have in God. We are all flying though life, but without trust in God, as soon as we start to fall we began flaying about, trying to grab hold of anything that we think will save us. We need to have faith that God will always meet us at the right moment and grab us to keep us from falling.
Without trust in God, we can only trust in ourselves. So we control our life by grabbing tightly to whatever or whoever we can, to try and make it safe for us. But because we’re clutching and grabbing onto all the wrong things, we will always fail and fall. When we’re flying through life we need to simply relax and stretch out our arms and say, “Lord, I have faith in You. Catch me.”
Most trapeze artists work over a safety net. That's because, the catcher is not infallible. Sometimes the timing is off, there's a miss and they fall. But our Catcher is unfailing. We don't need a safety net. Our Catcher will never miss! When we're flying though life we can look down and see the pit that the devil has prepared for us for us to fall into. But, when we raise our eyes and look up, we see God with outstretched arms reaching for us. He is our Catcher who will never let us fall.
The last words Jesus said before breathing His final breath were, “Into Your hands, I commit My spirit.” That needs to be our daily prayer in order for us to submit to God and give the control over our life back to Him.
Into Your hands Lord, I commit my spirit. Build my faith and my trust in You Lord, that I can just fly through life while reaching out to You in all my circumstances. Remind me Lord, that even in the scariest moments, You are waiting for me with outstretched arms – ready to grab me and hold me tight. Amen!
