Words of Grace

By Rev. Mahlon Nevel

We have seen the commercial on television. An elderly woman is lying on the kitchen floor. “I’ve fallen,” she cries out, “and I can’t get up.”

It happens to all of us. Whether we are young or old, we all fall down. Sometimes we stumble. Sometimes we get tripped up. Sometimes we lose our balance.

And that is also true in our Christian life. It is not that Christians never fall, for all of God’s children do. It is that, When Christians fall, they know what to do to get back up again.

God is able to keep us from falling. He is also able to pick us up when we do fall. He wants us to continue to stand, but he knows that we are weak.

David, a man after God’s own heart, fell a number of times, but he got up again each time. He wrote in Psalm 130:3 that if the Lord should mark all of our iniquities, who then could stand? But there is forgiveness with God. (v.4)

A just and godly person may fall seven times and get up again each time, according to Proverbs 24:16, A wicked and ungodly person, however, falls down and stays down.

C.S. Lewis gives us the following advice: “After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”

If we fall, and we will, let us get up again. And remember, there is forgiveness with God.