The Catcher
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
What a beautiful promise in troubled times, many of us may say: “Lord, I don’t know whether I can keep going, I am losing hope, I am losing vision - I am losing my faith.” The Lord says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
If we look at the Message Translation, “I will never let you down”, The Lord says: “Never walk off and leave you, no matter what.”
Isn’t that a beautiful reassurance on this Sunday morning?
The Passion Translation says: "I will never leave you alone, never! And I will not loosen my grip on your life.”
You know, I was listening to a talk the other day by a man, Henri Nouwen, who has since gone to be with The Lord, and he was fascinated about the trapeze that takes place in the circus.
Those people….the palms of my hands are going damp, just thinking about it…..those people who do amazing somersaults in mid-air and then get caught by the other person. And you know he says, we concentrate on the artist that is doing the somersaults, the triple somersaults, the double somersaults and we never think of the catcher - the man or the woman who catches the other person.
Now they are actually the most important part of the act. If the catcher does not catch the person doing the somersaults there will be a disaster.
And he says that the person who is doing the somersaults if they start panicking and start looking for the hands of the catcher, there will be an absolute catastrophe. What they do, they do their somersault and stretch their hands out and the catcher takes hold of their hands - isn’t that amazing?
And isn’t that so with Jesus? Jesus says “I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.” Jesus says, “Stretch out your hands and I will catch you.” He says, “ I will never leave you,” He says: “ I will never forsake you. I won’t run away, I won’t walk off and I will not loosen my grip.”
So He is the one who will catch you.
What do you and I have to do?
What we have to do is, by faith, stretch out our hands and say: “Lord, I am flying through the air, if you don’t catch me I am going to crash.”
And The Lord says, “I have never let you down, have I?”
And the answer is, “No, Lord, you haven’t.”
“So why are you panicking? Stretch out your hands and I will catch you!”
I want to say to you today on this Sunday: have a good rest and remember, the responsibility is not in your hands. The responsibility is in the catcher’s hands - and His name is Jesus!
Have a wonderful day.