“The grinding power of the Gospel story is like the power of millstones; and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.”
G.K. Chesterton
There once was a man who built his life, an imposing fortress on the edge of a cliff.
Perched proudly on the smooth stone of hard work and inherited advantage, his efforts earned the admiration and applause of all who looked up from the plain below.
In time, his soaring walls grew thick with loyalties and loves, traditions and trophies, with the values and viewpoints of significant somebodies whose approval he craved.
No drafty doubts troubled him. In every chink and crevice, he’d stuffed sandbags of certainty and pious conviction, hardened by age.
The fortress could not be assailed, for the man’s self-understanding and well-earned security were built on solid rock.
Life Upended
But one day, something kicked down the castle, grabbed the man by the ankles, and turned him upside down. The dangling man screamed in terror as he watched his carefully built self, like a well-polished mirror, bounce against the cliff walls, shattering to pieces on the valley floor below. All that was left of him was one desperate prayer that whatever was still clutching him wouldn’t let go.
Over time the man’s fright turned to anger. Was it God who had done this to him? What a cruel, malicious deity, if so! Sure, there were bad people who deserved to lose everything, but not he, a card-carrying member of the good!
However, anger tends to dribble away when one is suspended upside down, and gradually a new thought occurred. Could it be that the life now in ruins was the upside-down one, that all those years he’d been held secure by God’s firm grip alone?
At that very moment the man’s feet curled in delight, for he stood upright again. Without the need to be anyone special, the whole world now felt like home. The man lifted his arms to the loving gaze above him, and, with chin-chucked tickles and shrieks of laughter, they set off to explore.
“Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Mark 10:15
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
Luke 9:24-25
Are you ready for life to be turned right-side up?
