"We are going to sue you"
Those words grabbed my attention and for weeks it was as if my body was flooded with anxiety. I made a big mistake in that 7th grade class, trying to make others laugh. It went WAY too far, though, and I regretted it the moment she fell.
One of my classmates- an 8th grader- stood up. I decided on a whim to move her chair from its place- the chair that she was relying on to be there. I moved it knowing that she would expect it to be there. I moved it knowing she would probably fall.
I thought we would all laugh, but I was very wrong. She fell hard- and it hurt her. No one laughed.
Even as I type I feel a twinge of the guilt I felt that day as she tearfully went to the nurses' office. In some way I still wonder if she will make good on her promise of tracking me down to sue me.
She was relying on that chair to be there. She was ultimately okay, but it reminds me that there is a sense of risk in being around a 7th grade boy and risk in relying on anything. A chair. A financial investment. A loved one. We have a hard time relying on anything or anyone because we know deep down that they could possibly let us fall when we rely on them.
We still need someone to rely on though. We can't survive without trusting someone or something. It may be risky, but we do rely on someone.
It is usually ourselves. Sometimes it is out of fear ("I can't trust anyone again. They will only let me down...again.") Sometimes it is out of defiance ("If I rely on someone else it wont turn out the way I KNOW it should.") But, when we ultimately rely on ourselves and our way of thinking, we live a life of selfish, defiant, fear.
That is what we will focus on tomorrow night: we can rely on a trust-worthy Father. Our Father knows what we need. He knows we need to rely on him. He also knows that we don't want to. Maybe, we don't even have the ability to rely on him.
He also knows that he can prove our selfish fears wrong. He wants to show us that we can entrust those things that matter most to him...that he won't pull the chair out from under us like so many have in the past.