Faith of a Trapeze

Churches in Buena Vista don't use air conditioning. This means air doesn't circulate, and Oxygen slowly depletes during the hour or so of the service. Pretty funny to see the drummer falling asleep during the second worship set. Thought I would throw that out there as a random fact...

At church today the pastor quoted a Henri Nouwen book. The excerpt taken was from Henri's experience with a group of trapeze performers. Basically there are two roles in a trapeze act. The 'flyer', who's job is to perform acrobatics while flying to the 'catcher'. The catcher's job is to, well, catch the flyer. Pretty simple.

Henri was amazed at the difficulty of the flyer's role. Henri asked how the flyer perfectly timed maneuvers so that he would successfully be caught. Surprisingly the flyer responded that his job was the easiest. It's that catcher who has to time the catch at split-second precision. All the flyer has to do is let go of the bar and wait to be caught. Everything relies on the catcher.

The pastor then drew the correlation of the flyer to our Christian faith. We as Christians essentially do nothing. Our only job is to 'let go' of whatever it is we are holding on to, and wait for God to catch us. Our faith has nothing to do with performing, it's all on the catcher. We can't do anything to help the catcher other than reach out our arms. Pretty powerful illustration.

There's a pretty solid example of this in Matthew 4. Jesus is just starting his ministry and essentially has zero followers (or enemies for that matter). While walking on the beach He meets two brothers who are fisherman, more than likely multi-generational. In Jesus' first interaction with them He asks the brothers to follow him.

¹⁸ As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ²⁰ At once they left their nets and followed him.


The astonishing part of this whole deal is their response. They didn't say, "Wait, I've got some baggage to clean up" or "Let me figure out who will run the fishing business that's kept our family afloat for 5 generations." Peter and Andrew dropped their nets 'at once' and followed. They probably didn't even know Jesus was God incarnate! That sort of Faith can only be God inspired, not a rational decision made by the human. That's the kind of faith I pray for...


On another note... The Colorado stars tonight are Re dic u lous.