Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Wednesday June 21, 2006

The other day the name of well known, now notorious Christian man came up and I mentioned that yes, I am aware of the horror of the man's long secret life, now revealed and being shouted from the house top. In the course of the conversation I deliberately noted that I had a written a letter to him to give assurance that in spite of everything there is still room at the cross. To say that you could cut the air with a knife is understatement.

I suggested to my Pharisaical friends that we should consider ourselves for we all are kept by the power of God and not of ourselves. This really calmed everyone down!! Another friend said, "Larry, will you ever learn to let your fallen friends wallow in their misery and go on about your own business?" He meant well.

William Faulkner, watched as a gentleman pulled a chair out for a woman to be seated. The woman, busy talking with other guests failed to notice the polite gesture of the man and thus fell right on her… Mr. Faulkner, then at the top of his career, sat down on the floor with the woman. He preferred to get on the floor with the fallen.

During the aforementioned conversation I recalled this story of Faulkner, and I thought of Jesus and the fact that the incarnation is more like Faulkner sitting on the floor with the fallen woman, John 8, than was the conversation of which I was part.

As I looked at each man in the room, each of us but one had been considered a 'fallen' man in some way by others in the time past. O, certainly not like the man in our conversation, but we had missed the mark without doubt. In my case the situation was overstated, but truth be known about other areas of my life, it was understated. And I have more than a sneaky suspicion the same is true of the others.

I would like to tell you in the course of time I worked up enough courage and strength to, on my own, get up and run like a gazelle to Jesus and He put His arms around me and welcomed by with all the love of heaven. But that is not the way it happened to me or to anyone else.

As I sat there, totally humiliated, the chair of respectability as it were, pulled out from under me, Jesus left the ivory palaces of glory and sat down along side of me, and gave me the strength and courage to get up and go on with the business at hand.

In our time there seems to be several views of Christianity, one says once we are saved we will never need help, at least not as bad as the man of the conversation and another which posits that Christ will help me, but no one with a worse sin. Still another takes what I believe to be biblical, that Christ not only will, but wants to sit on the floor with us and there give us light, strength and courage to deal with why we are sitting or wallowing on the floor, and enable us to get on with the life He has for us to live.

Been on the floor with a fallen brother or sister lately?

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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