The Cafeteria

When I was a boy... I told people that my father was stronger than anyone else in the world...

So I would go out on the front porch and roar to the neighborhood: "My daddy's arm is strong as trucks! The strongest man in the world."...

In those days a cherry tree grew in our backyard. This was my hiding place. Ten feet above the ground a stout limb made a horizontal fork, a cradle on which I could lie face-down, reading, thinking, being alone. Nobody bothered me here. Even my parents didn't know where I went to hide. Sometimes Daddy would come out and call, "Wally? Wally?" but he didn't see me in the leaves.

I felt very tricky.

Then came the thunderstorm...

One day suddenly, a wind tore through the backyard and struck my cherry tree with such force that it ripped the book from my hands and nearly threw me from the limb. I locked my arms around the forking branches and hung on. My head hung down between them. I tried to wind my legs around the limb, but the whole tree was wallowing in the wind...

"Daddeeeeeeee !"

There he was... The branches swept up and down, like huge waves on an ocean- and Daddy saw me, and right away he came out into the wind and weather, and I felt so relieved because I just took it for granted that he would climb right up the tree to get me.

But that wasn't his plan at all.

He came to a spot right below me and lifted up his arms and shouted, "Jump."

"What?"

"Jump. I'll catch you."

JUMP? I had a crazy man for a father. He was standing six or seven miles beneath me, holding up two skinny arms and telling me to jump. If I jumped, he'd miss. I'd hit the ground and die...

But the wind and the rain slapped that cherry tree, bent it back, and cracked my limb at the trunk. I dropped a foot. My eyes flew open. Then the wood whined and splintered and sank, and so did I, in bloody terror.

No, I did not jump. I let go. I surrendered.

I fell.

In a fast, eternal moment I despaired and plummeted. This, I thought, is what it is like to die--

But my father caught me...

Now, in such a storm the tree which was our stable world is shaken, and instinct makes us grab tighter: by our own strength we grip the habits that have helped in the past, repeating them, believing them. We'd rather trust what IS than what MIGHT BE: that is, our power, our reason and feeling and endurance... We spend a long time screaming NO!...

But always, God is present. God has always been present. And it is God who says, "Jump."

Oh, the places you can go!