All fall down

 

The Gospel set for Holy Communion today is Matthew 7:21-28, and includes this:

[Jesus said] ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house[-hold] on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house[-hold] on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!’

Matthew 7:24-27

In English, the force of the rain, floods, and wind appear identical. But in the Greek, they are contrasted: prospiptó and proskoptó.

The former is to fall prostrate before; the latter, to strike against.

There is no life that does not, from time to time, face the storm. But it is possible to order our lives, and the lives of our household, in such a way that the storms fall down before us in awe and reverence, acknowledging defeat; or to order our lives, and the lives of our household, in such a way that we are knocked down with such force that we don’t get up again.

The difference is whether we construct our lives implementing the words of Jesus, more than (not less than) teaching, words of life-giving hope.

Your physical house can be utterly destroyed, as the homes of so many who have fled Ukraine in recent months can testify. But to hold fast to Jesus is to overcome.