Posters

In this apartment, our posters like to fall off the walls. Frances and I have lived here for almost a full year now, with many days punctuated by shiny rectangles of inspiration crashing to the floor. Those double-sided Scotch squares never hold, white sticky tack never holds...and we even got that annoying orange Elmer's sticky tack that stains the walls, and it never holds.

I was proud of one poster in my room that had never fallen. It's right above my desk. It's a picture of a serene seascape with clouds up ahead and mountains in the distance. Your point of view is from a beach with a docked boat. The boat is pointing at this awesome jungle-y looking island looming in the distance, like Madagascar. It looks awesome. It's like a giant forested thumb rising out of the ocean. It makes you want to grab that boat and sail to that thumbish island, until you look down at your glowing screen and remember the English paper you're writing and your ears reawaken to the lovely Cain & Abel's soundtrack downstairs.

But then I came home the other day to discover that it had finally fallen.

And you know, the funny thing about these posters is that once they've fallen, they never stay up as well again. No matter how you re-roll the sticky tack and firmly press the shiny sheet against the off-white wall, it's always so much easier for the poster to fall down the second time, and the third time. My beautiful poster had held up almost a whole year before falling, but now that it's fallen off the wall once, it's far more likely to succumb to gravity again. It may take only a few days.

"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."

There's probably something you're struggling with, something that keeps tugging at you. Something you've been fighting for years. We all have our temptations, addictions, and rough pasts. You've been consistently practicing self-control and giving your burdens to Him, sharing little daily victories with God. But maybe right now that thing looks really good, or maybe you've hit a rough spot with God and just don't care much about pleasing him right now. Maybe now it's hard for you to have hope that you will reap rewards because it doesn't look like God is taking care of you.

Please don't fall. Don't allow gravity to take hold of you. The thing is, once you've taken one fall after climbing up for so long, it's so easy to fall again...and again...and again. We kinda have a lot in common with thin sheets of paper when it comes to God. I mean, we are that weak compared to His strength. Because we live in a world that is often hostile to Truth and Love, we constantly have to fight, but the gravity pulls and pulls and won't stop until we die. We get tired, and it's understandable. We're flimsy by ourselves, with no foundation and no purpose. No matter how independent we like to pretend we are, we need to be held up by our Mighty Fortress. Day by day by difficult day.

There will be times when we have no idea why we're following Him anymore, when we have no idea why we continue to obey. That kind of obedience is best, the kind that seems to go unrewarded, that pushes through when there appears to be no incentive from God and every possible reward from the world.

In The Screwtape Letters, a demon says,
"Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round on a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Keep holding on. Trust. TRUST. Don't fall back into what you were saved from. This could be one of the most important stages of healing - when your temptation is being flung in your face with all its riches, with all its seductive power...and succumbing looks so good, or so easy, or even the only option. Of course the enemy would love to make you fall, right when you're about to reach the top and conquer what he's enslaved you to, right when God is about to do something so great that you would not believe it even if He told you. Remember who is the author of lies and who is the author of Truth.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."

Hold on, and God will blow you away.