Good THURSDAY afternoon.  Yes, this is late.  I have a lot of reasons for this, the best one being that I had a mountain of stuff to dig through after being out of the state for 2 weeks.  This will have to suffice.

Well, actually, the reason is that I just felt uninspired to write.  Until last evening.

Last evening I went home from the church building, donned my work-out gear, and mounted my bicycle for the daily constitutional down NW 105^th to West Fletcher and back.  Near the old Malcolm High School I spied a young friend, waved at him, and continued on.  A glance in the mirror on the handlebar revealed that he was now following me on his own two-wheeler.  I figured I’d stop at the intersection of Malcolm Road and NW 105^th to chat with him a bit.  I looked over my shoulder to see if he were still coming, looked back to the front (the direction I was heading), saw a car approaching from the direction of the church, and decided to put on the brakes.

I don’t know why I grabbed the right lever as hard as I did.  Maybe it was the car that hove into sight, though I had plenty of time to stop.  Maybe it was because I was glancing over my shoulder and became a bit disoriented about which hand was which.  But whatever the reason, the front tire locked up tighter than a rusted lug nut and I went right over the handlebars.

The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion.  No, I didn’t see my life pass before my eyes.  I saw the pavement slowly rise to meet my 61 year old body, and as it did I thought to myself, also in slow motion, “This is going to hurt.”

I must thank my 87 year old mother for the ability to fall and rise again without breaking any thing.  She’s done this for years, and I’m glad for her genes.  I sat in the middle of the road, my left shoulder and elbow aching.  My head also ached, but not from contacting another more solid surface.  That ache was from the severe jolt of the rest of my body hitting the road.

Feeling more than a little foolish, I got up, assured my young friend that I was ok, and allowed him to straighten my handlebars.  Then, after a brief visit and an assurance to him that I would be all right, I went on down the road to finish my ride.

Isn’t that supposed to be what we do when we fall?  Aren’t we supposed to get up and go on?  That seems to be the whole tenor of Scripture, doesn’t it?  Abraham fell hard in the matter of Hagar, but he got up and went on as the friend of God.  David fell even harder over another man’s wife, but he got up again to lead a nation in worship of his God.  Peter collapsed big time, first in the waters of Galilee, and then in a priest’s courtyard.  But we all know him as a pillar of the early church, and an apostolic writer who encourages us today.  John Mark, the nephew of Paul’s friend Barnabas, landed hard when he went AWOL on that first missionary trip; but he dusted himself off to become useful later on to the man he’d so severely let down.  

Have you fallen down since I last visited with you via this Message business?  Hard?  Bruised a bit, maybe?  Get up.  Confess your failure to the One who the psalmist says forgives our transgressions (65:3), and go on.  Don’t let a tumble keep you down.

As we shall see Sunday, one of the reasons God’s people gather to worship Him together is the fact that he forgives their sins.  Read Psalm 65 in preparation for our time together this Sunday. 

Believe it or not, in spite of my tumble, it is really good to be home.