Stumbling

Trinity Evangelical Divinty School professor Kevin Vanhoozer writes about caring for his aging mother in an issue of CT magazine:

For nine years now, I have been watching my mother’s identity slowly fade as memories and capacities switch off, one after another, like lights of a house shutting down for the night. Marriage may be a school of sanctification, as Luther said, but caring for aging parents is its grad school, especially when he or she lives with you and suffers from dementia.

It’s been said that as we become older, we become caricatures of ourselves. Dementia speeds the process. It’s easy to see why: With loss of executive cognitive functioning, we’re less prone to monitor what we say and do. We begin to fly on auto-pilot, re-tracing again and again well-trod paths.

What lies under … the social masks we have carefully constructed? What lies under my mother’s happy face? (“I’m fine,” she’d say, even after a fall). I recently discovered the answer.

Years into the dementia, she lost her last line of defense and began to voice her inmost thoughts aloud. “Father, don’t let me fall” accompanied her every shuffling step behind her walker. Initially I thought this terribly sad—clearly, she wasn’t fine but anxious—yet I eventually found it comforting. The Bible depicts life as a walk: Shouldn’t we all be praying to the Lord to help us avoid missteps? Though she had forgotten former friends and neighbors, and large swaths of her own life, she remembered the fatherhood of God.

Despite the presence of several acclaimed breweries, restaurants, and the last remaining Blockbuster video rental store in America, the town of Bend, Oregon features another illustrious tourist attraction garnering local attention – a giant rock.

The large rock, which locals refer to as the Big, Obvious Boulder (or BOB for short), is roughly three feet tall and three feet wide. It sits near the entrance to a parking lot, and gets attention when oblivious drivers collide with it and their vehicles require rescuing. Bob’s claim to fame is that it is a magnet for cars, which end up high-centered on the boulder and need to be rescued.

Not only is Bob itself often affixed with stickers and signs warning drivers, but it’s become something of a local phenomenon, with its own Facebook group. Former Bend resident Terry Heiser, claims to have had the first run-in with Bob back in 2002. He said:

It was about 9 p.m. on a weekday and I was heading downtown to meet some friends. I decided to stop in at 7-11 and I took the turn into the parking lot as I had done dozens of times. I wasn’t driving crazy or fast. It was just an innocuous turn and next thing you know chaos happens and my truck ended up on its side.

I had to climb out of the passenger window to get out. I immediately called my buddies and they came down with an even bigger truck to help get me off of Bob. It was such a stupid but hilarious accident that I haven’t lived down to this day.

You can view the famous boulder here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Christ, life of; Stumbling; Stumbling blocks - In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ was also a stumbling stone. People overlooked his significance and stumbled to their harm. 2) Attention; Carelessness - As we go through the routine activities of life, it is important to stay focused on what lies directly before us. When we become distracted by more trivial affairs, we are more likely to experience trouble, misfortune, and/or heartbreak.

The risk of falling should be obvious. It is so obvious that it has become an established part of the legal system. In a recent civil case, an appeals court dismissed the complaint of a college student who had fallen from a bunk bed. The basis of the case was that the institution “neglected” to include a notice concerning the risk and danger of falling from the bed. The court held that the student, who had slept in the bunk for three months, had “equal knowledge that the lofted bed was raised off the ground and lacked guardrails before she fell.”

The judge’s decision concluded with the phrase: “And significantly we have repeatedly held . . . that 'no danger is more commonly realized or risk appreciated than that of falling.’”

To read the complete court decision click here.

With hundreds of things to see in Berlin, few tourists pay attention to what lies under their feet. The four inch by four inch blocks of brass embedded in the pavement are easy to miss. But once you know they exist, you begin to come across them with surprising frequency.

Each stone is engraved with the name and fate of an individual who has suffered under the Nazi regime. They are known as Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones.” There are over eight thousand of them in the German capital, and tens of thousands of them are spread across European countries, making it the largest decentralized monument in the world.

The idea was first conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 to commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust. Each block, which begins with “Here lived,” is placed at exactly the last place where the person lived freely before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror and was deported to an extermination camp. Unlike other holocaust memorials that focus only on Jews, the Stolpersteine honor all victims of the Nazi regime, including Jews, the disabled, the dissident, and the gays.

Although not everyone supports the drive, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer, the craftsman who makes each Stolperstein, spoke in support of the project. “I can’t think of a better form of remembrance,” he says. “If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ can also be a stumbling stone, or the stone that was rejected by men that is precious to God.

Former figure skater Scott Hamilton won the National and World Championships in 1981 before winning a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic. Hamilton and his wife Tracie have four children, including two children adopted from Haiti. He's also a committed follower of Christ. While he was pursuing his success as a skater, he once said he dropped out of church involvement and started what he jokingly called "The Church of Scott." But through the love of his wife and other Christians, he came to a sincere faith in Christ.

Rooted in his faith, Hamilton had an interesting take on dealing with personal sin and failure. In a 2018 New York Times interview Hamilton said: "I calculated once how many times I fell during my skating career—41,600 times. But here's the funny thing: I got up 41,600 times. That's the muscle you have to build in your psyche—the one that reminds you to just get up."

The Christmas season is not only one of the most stressful times of the year; it's also one of the most dangerous times of the year. A recent article summarized some of the research from Great Britain on Christmas stress and accidents:

• Almost 20 percent of people find the experience of hosting guests and preparing for Christmas meals and festivities "completely overwhelming." A third of women feel more stressed throughout December than any other month across the year.
• Three percent of people suffer an electric shock due to badly wired Christmas lighting and one in 50 fall out of the attic trying to get the tinsel and decorations down.
• Some 2.6 million people have even fallen off a stool or ladder while hanging up the decorations.
• A mammoth 700,000 people have been injured in a sales rush, while trying to snag a bargain.

Russell Atkinson, CEO of Great Britain's National Accident Helpline said:

Unfortunately the festive and winter season can bring with it hazards for your health, from the cold weather and long, dark nights to unsafe electric decorations around the home. As such, we urge people to pause and take steps to keep themselves, their friends and family safe, in order to ensure they have a relaxed and cheerful holiday season.

Possible Preaching Angles: Of course this illustration highlights the need for joy and peace at Christmas, but it also highlights what Christ did in the Incarnation—he did not play it safe. He entered into a world of accidents and hardships and injustice and profound unsafety and suffering.

It's like a scene out of an action movie: one moment, the city street seems calm and ordinary, and in the next moment, the asphalt and concrete crumble away, revealing a giant, gaping hole.

Unfortunately, it's not a scene from a movie—it was an event that unfolded in Beihai, a city in China. And a scooter rider got to experience the sudden sinkhole up close and personal.

"When he did arrive at the fresh abyss, he appears to have been staring at his cellphone," reports NPR's The Two-Way. Soon he was staring at the inside of the collapsed road.

The bad news? The cause of the collapse hasn't yet been determined. The good news? "Shortly after [the scooter driver's] plunge, he climbed back to the surface under his own power, apparently unharmed."

Potential Preaching Angles: Hopefully not too many of us have to worry about driving into sinkholes in our day-to-day lives—but "black holes" can appear in many shapes and sizes and forms. Thankfully, the apostle Peter has some advice on staying alert against the wiles of the Enemy: "Resist him, standing firm in the faith" (1 Pet. 5:9).

A classic example of an almost-conversion to Christ happened to Lord Kenneth Clark, one of Great Britain's most prominent art historians and authors, and the producer of the BBC television series Civilization. In an autobiographical account, Clark writes that when he was living in a villa in France he had a curious episode.

I had a religious experience. It took place in the church of San Lorenzo, but did not seem to be connected with the harmonious beauty of the architecture. I can only say that for a few minutes, my whole being was radiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had ever experienced before. This state of mind lasted for several minutes … but wonderful as it was, [it] posed an awkward problem in terms of action. My life was far from blameless. I would have to reform. My family would think I was going mad, and perhaps after all, it was a delusion, for I was in every way unworthy of such a flood of grace. Gradually the effect wore off and I made no effort to retain it. I think I was right. I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course. But I had "felt the finger of God" quite sure and, although the memory of this experience has faded, it still helps me to understand the joys of the saints.

Where's Susan? That's the innocent question Joshua Rogers's daughter asked as they were reading The Last Battle, the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. Susan is the child queen who helped her siblings save Narnia from the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. However, she is conspicuously absent from an early scene in The Last Battle that includes every character who traveled to Narnia as a child. Rogers writes:

"Daddy, where is she?" my daughter asked again.

"We'll see," I said, with a tinge of sadness.

Although I've read The Chronicles of Narnia dozens of times since I was a boy, Susan's tragic end gets me every time. The book eventually reveals that Susan grows up and outgrows her love for Narnia. We get few details about her until the end of the book, when High King Peter responds to an inquiry into his sister's whereabouts.

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

Susan thought she had become too grown up for thoughts of a great king like Aslan and a blessed land like Narnia and, though she had once experienced it, she left it behind.

It happened in just a blink with a quarter mile to go at the 2005 running of the Preakness. Afleet Alex had battled his way to the front of the pack when another horse cut in front of him, and their heels clipped each other. Afleet Alex stumbled, his knees buckled, his nose nearly went into the dirt, and his jockey, Jeremy Rose, hung on.

“That’s the closest I’ve ever been without falling. I thought for sure we were going down,” Rose said. “The thought process was, I was going to get run over. Luckily, he came right back up underneath me.”

Afleet Alex not only recovered, he went on to win the race by nearly five lengths.

The Bible sometimes refers to the Christian life as running a race in which we all stumble, and yet if we hold on, the Lord provides us sure footing and balance so that we will not fall.

Success doesn't mean everything in our lives has turned out well. You can be successful in coming back from a fall.

There are many kinds of sorrow on earth, but the deepest of all sorrows is when the heart loses Christ, and He is no longer seen, and there is no hope of comfort from Him. Only a few are so sorely tempted. All comfort has gone, all joy is ended, there is no help from heaven or sun or moon, from angel or any creature. There is even no help from God. But the world rejoices.

Whenever you fall, pick up something.

The further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend.

If you see another stumble or fall, let your first thought be that, of all men, you are most likely to stumble or fall in that same manner.

I heard once of an Italian peasant woman who happened to bump into a monk who lived in a monastery high on a hill above her village. Since she bumped into him in the middle of the road, she said "Father, I've always wanted to ask somebody what you men of God do up there on the top of the mountain that looks to me to be so close to heaven. I've always wondered about the life of holiness that you lead up there."

And this old man, a wise and honest interpreter, said, "What do we men of God do up there on the holy mountain? I'll tell you, my dear. We fall down; we get up. We fall down; we get up. We fall down; we get up."

That is the way of all Christian growth. It doesn't happen all at once. But it does happen when we glimpse what we have not yet achieved, and we want that so badly that we honestly say, "Here's where I am. I'm not going to try to get myself together and then ask God to move me to the goal. I'm going to ask God to come into this moment. It's the only hope of ever making it to that high range of development."

If we have integrity, we don't hide our stumble; we don't act like we didn't.