Holding the Rope

TITLE: Holding the Rope
DATE:  July 27, 2019
TEXT: - Psalms 56:3-4 ESV - When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?

 Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed.

Years ago I saw a cartoon. In this particular cartoon, the bad guy was stuck on a cliff. On his own he couldn’t’ go up, and that left him looking at a v – e – r – y long drop down. Thankfully a life-saving rope was lowered down to him.  He grabbed hold ad started to climb. Surprisingly, he got nowhere. He kept climbing, and more rope kept getting passed though his hands.

That’s when they showed the very top of the cliff. There was the good guy, and there was the rope. The only problem was this rope wasn’t attached to anything. The good guy watched as the bad guy kept climbing. He had to climb as fast as he could just to stay where he was.

And then, eventually, there was no more rope. The bad guy looked at the camera, gave a little wave and plunged out of sight. The only consolation was this: in the next scene he showed up undamaged and unscathed.

But that was a cartoon and cartoons have little similarity to real life.

Take for example the website which was set up in Colorado which allowed state employees to report cases of abuse and neglect. It went live for a while, but then someone noticed there had been a mistake made in the original set up. A correction was made, a new site went up and state personnel started using it.

At least most did. Some never heard about the change. Some kept using the old site. Some kept registering problems but nobody in an official capacity was reading the messages. That went on for four years, until the mistake was accidentally found.

In short, it was found that nobody was holding the other end of the rope.

I am pleased to report that the State of Colorado has addressed the 321 emails which were posted on the bogus site and they are working with the five cases which called for an emergency response.
As one of the people from the Office of Children, Youth and Families said, “it's of great concern that we had five that did not reach the level of attention they needed in a timely way....We wish we would have been able to identify these earlier but we did not know this email even existed."

Thankfully the oversight has been corrected and, in Colorado, somebody is holding the rope for children who are in difficult situations.

Which leads me to ask: “Who is holding the rope for you?

There  are more than a few people who trust the government to solve their problems and offer them the help they need. There are folks who trust their bank account; their influential friends, their own smarts.

Sadly, each of these human institutions have human limitations. They may hold the rope for a while, but eventually their grip grows week and the person who trusted them will go tumbling

Truly, if you are going to have a reliable Individual holding your rope, I would encourage you to look to Jesus. The Savior Who gave His life to redeem yours,  He has shown His commitment, His strength, His faithfulness.

THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, let me realize Your faithfulness far surpasses anything anyone else can attempt to offer. In that realization let me trust you completely and always. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

The devotion for today was inspired by various recent news articles. For further reading you may wish to go to this address: and the article written by Arden Dier for Newser  on July 16, 2019. See the post at: https://www.newser.com/story/277861/5-child-neglect-cases-missed-due-to-unchecked-email.html?utm_source=share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=def
The music which introduces and concludes our devotions was written by Guy Baumann. He along with three of his brothers perform on the album: The Baumann Brothers which may be ordered here: http://thebaumannbrothers.com/index.html