What If You Jump?

Carlos was admitted to hospice for lung cancer at age eighty-two. Carlos was a devoted Kiwanis Club member. Four years earlier, when Carlos’ wife, Pearl, was still living and on hospice, he roped me into speaking at his Kiwanis club luncheon. Carlos didn’t have to tug very hard though; because I’ve always been thankful for the New Boston Kiwanis Club. You see, they sponsored our high school National Honor Society and managed the low-income apartments where I lived for about a year while in college.

Harold, the Kiwanis apartment manager back then, taught me some painfully valuable lessons about “choices and consequences”. I remember the day he knocked on my apartment door, apartment L-2, and said, “You’re evicted! And I want you out of here right now!” I defiantly, and overly confidently, declared, “I’m not leaving! You can’t make me! I know my rights!” Well, later that same evening Harold was at my door again, this time accompanied by a New Boston police officer. I moved out the next day. I think that’s all I better say about that.

When Carlo’s daughter, Vicki, shared the following story with me, I knew I had to pass it on. Vicki recounted: “It was about fourteen years ago, back when mom just got saved and was studying the Bible a lot…Mom had only been a Christian for about a year. She and dad got saved at the same time…When my granddaughter, Kelsey, was about a year old; mom and I were in the back yard watching the kids play. We were standing by the back porch.” Carlos added, “I built that porch. It was a small porch with an awning over it.” Vicki continued; “Mom and I were talking and all at once Kelsey jumped off the porch towards me. I turned around real fast just in time to catch her. Mom said, ‘That’s the kind of faith that God wants us to have in Him; the willingness to jump to Him, to trust Him to catch us.’”

Pearl’s profound realization reminds me of a song by Nicole Nordaman titled, “What If”: “What if you’re right and He’s just another nice guy? What if it’s true; they say the cross will only make a fool out of you…? What if you pick apart the logic and begin to poke the holes? What if the crown of thorns is no more than a folklore that must be told…? But what if you’re wrong; what if there’s more?

What if there’s hope that you’ve never dreamed of hoping for? What if you jump; just close your eyes? What if the arms that catch you, catch you by surprise?”

My eviction from the Kiwanis apartments, some thirty-eight years ago now, was a part of a series of events that lead me to the edge of a cliff. I was defiant, empty, desperate, directionless, guilty and ashamed. To complicate my situation, at age sixteen I had decided that I would never depend upon or trust anyone again, that I’d make it on my own.

But at the age of nineteen I wasn’t making it. It was then that a caring person simply told me, “Loren, Jesus loves you and I wish you had what I have.” I could see it in her eyes, in her countenance, that she had something that I didn’t, something that I longed for. I didn’t know how or where to get it, but I was self-determined to find it. So I started searching.

One night at five o’clock in the morning, alone in my bedroom, after reading the Bible for five hours, I gave up and cried, “God I can’t do it. If I’m gonna be saved, you’re gonna have to do it for me! I decided to give God one more chance and I opened the Bible and read, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you…”(Matthew 7:7-9). I thought, “Surely it can’t be that easy. Surely I have to do more than just ask?” Then I prayed, “God, either this is true or you are a liar. And if it’s true, then it’s true for me. So I’m taking you at your word. I’m asking.” That night I “jumped” and the arms that caught me caught me by surprise. For I didn’t think anybody would ever love and accept me just the way I was.

And now I’m here telling you, “Jesus loves you and I wish you had what I have. And I’m asking you, “What if you jump?”