Hello,
With no scientific backing, but only personal observation over the years of being a Pastor, it seems to me that as people live out their lives, they find themselves falling somewhere between being a tree climber and a hole digger. Here’s what I mean.
Some folks tend to live their lives climbing to higher and higher levels of accomplishment. They gain greater and greater amounts of respect and acclaim. People look up to them, and they often are awarded for their deeds. “World’s Greatest Dad”, “Mother of the year”, “Employee of the month”, “Student of the week”, the sibling you can always count on, the kindest person I have ever met, the pillar of the community, the living example of the Christian faith. Thing about tree climbers, though, is the higher you go, the more precarious the perch, and the further it is to fall. It can be a scary thing being a tree climber. One slip and you can lose it all. For some tree climbers, the world delights in their tumbling. For others, the world tends to abandon them in shunning disappointment.
The other end of the spectrum are hole diggers. They are folks that just don’t seem to be able to live without a shovel in their hands, digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes. People look at them, too, and stick labels on them. Loser, black sheep, good for nothing, fool, dregs of society, bottom feeders, deadwood. Thing about hole diggers is the more holes you dig, the easier it is to fall into them, and the deeper you dig the harder it is to get out of them. People tire of dealing with hole diggers, and so often the world tries not to look into the holes that they come upon in order to not have to deal with what they may find in them
Interestingly enough, the Bible tells us that Jesus had a heart for both tree climbers and hole diggers….and everyone in between. There was an expert tree climber that Jesus came across one day, Zacchaeus. He had worked hard to become one of the wealthiest men in town, and the was at the top of his trade, tax collecting. Unfortunately for him, it was lonely at the top and the people could hardly wait for him to come tumbling down. Interestingly, he was high in a Sycamore tree when Jesus spotted him, and while the crowds laughed at him for his tree climbing, Jesus opened his heart to him, telling him to come on down from that precarious tree, so that Jesus could set him high on a unwavering tree, the tree of God’s love for him. So loved was Zacchaeus, that Jesus, the Son of God was going to take his place in Zacchaeus’ house. That is a higher stoop than Zacchaeus’ could have ever climbed himself, and it was a stoop from which Zacchaeus would never fall.
And then the hole diggers….. Once a group of people brought to Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery, apparently to put it gently, caught in the act. We don’t know how it all happened…what led to the adultery…how they were discovered, but we do know this: the law prescribed that the woman be stoned to death. All the good people were to gather around her and pelt her with large stones that would crack her skull, break her bones, and fatally injure her. Caught in a deep, deep pit, the people gathered around her and as they were looking for stones to wield upon her, Jesus looked at something else. He looked at her. And making every stone too heavy with guilt to lift up, he shielded her with his grace and mercy. Then he lifted her up out of the hole she had dug, and like a prisoner released from jail said, “Go, you are free.”
If my sociological/theological observations are correct, each of you who are reading this Bungee Cord lie somewhere on the climber-digger continuum. So, I hope that by reading this, you have discovered that no matter where you are on this continuum, there is one who is neither hoping for your fall or preparing to throw dirt upon you in your hole. Instead he comes to you to lift you up – up in his grace, grace from which you will never fall, and grace that will overwhelm any hole that might try and swallow you up. That is what happens every Sunday morning when we gather in church, so let me invite you to join the rest of us tree climbers and hole diggers whom Jesus is lifting up.
Have a great week,
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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