We have all had moments where life slips a bit. Where things do not go to plan.
Sometimes it is visible. Sometimes it is entirely private. It might be stress, or loss, or regret, or loneliness, or simply the quiet feeling that you are not quite where you hoped you would be by now.
I had a dream once. I will not try to explain the whole of it, it was a dream, and dreams resist explanation… but at the end of it there was a card with a message. It said:
Someone who’s falling doesn’t need to be told. They need to be caught.
It is easy, from the outside, to analyse someone else’s situation. To explain what went wrong. To offer the advice you would have taken, if you had been in their shoes. There is even a psychological term for the instinct to attribute other people’s problems to their character rather than their circumstances, which psychologists call fundamental attribution error. We do it constantly, and usually without noticing.
But when you are the one falling, advice is not what you need most. You need presence. You need someone who moves toward you rather than standing back to assess the situation. You need arms. You need love.
There was a man, a few thousand years ago, who consistently moved toward people who were struggling, people who were rejected, ashamed, who had made serious mistakes, who felt themselves far beyond the reach of God’s grace. He did not stand at a distance and explain their failures. He sat with them. He spoke to them. He restored them.
The woman caught in adultery (John 8). The lost sheep that warranted a whole search party, the coins in Luke 15. These are not sentimental stories. They are a theology of movement, a God who does not wait for us to sort ourselves out before coming close.
Christianity, at its heart, is not about a God who stands at a distance pointing out where we have fallen. It is about a God who is with us. Ready to catch us.
The Lord upholds all who fall, and lifts up all who are bowed down.
— Psalm 145:14
Someone who is falling does not need to be told. They need to be caught.
The message of Jesus is that you are not falling alone, and He will catch you.
Related: Thought for the Day: Gratitude | My Testimony | The Boiler Story