The Kid on the Ladder

Hey there,

A few summers ago I watched a dad teach two of his kids to swim. It was a public lake, a wooden dock that had seen better paint, and an afternoon hot enough that everybody else had already given up and gone in.

The older one didn't need a speech. His dad was standing out from the ladder with the water at his chest, and he told him it was fine and that he'd be right there. The kid took three steps, pinched his nose, and jumped. He came up coughing and laughing at the same time, dog-paddled back to the dock, and climbed out like he'd been doing it all his life. Somebody on a towel actually clapped. From the shore, that looked like faith, the clean kind people notice.

His sister had been watching the whole week, and it was the same dad and the same sentence. She'd get as far as the last rung, both feet on the wood, and stop. One afternoon she made it to her waist and climbed right back out, dripping and mad at herself. Another day she wanted his hands under her arms the entire time, and she asked more than once, "You're not gonna let go, right?" He kept telling her he wouldn't, but she still needed one toe on the bottom before she'd push off.

I stood there longer than I meant to. Nobody was scolding her, and nobody compared the two of them out loud, but you could still feel it, the way we all do when one person moves and another one can't yet. It looked like one of them trusted him and the other one was still working up to it.

Except that isn't what I saw when I stopped watching the kids and watched the dad. He didn't climb out and stand on the dock with his arms crossed until she worked up the nerve. And he didn't treat the boy who jumped like he was the only one who really trusted him. He stayed in the water, chest-deep, with a hand on her back when she needed the hand and a half-step back when she didn't. He stayed close enough that if she slipped, she wasn't going under by herself. When she finally pushed off and made four ugly strokes, he looked just as glad as he had when the other one jumped.

It was the same lake and the same dad, and two different ways of believing he meant what he said.

That picture has stayed with me, because we do this with faith. We act like it comes in one shape, like the person who jumps is the one who really believes and the person still on the ladder is somehow behind.

I don't think Scripture paints that picture.

Just say the word

There's a Roman officer in Matthew 8 who never even asks Jesus to make the trip. A servant he cares about is home, paralyzed and in terrible pain, and the officer meets Jesus on the road and then stops him. "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed." He knows how authority works, because when he tells a soldier to go, the soldier goes, and he figures the Lord of heaven doesn't need to stand in the doorway to be obeyed. The whole scene is short, and you can read it in Matthew 8:5-13.

Jesus stops and marvels at him. He says he hasn't found faith like that in all of Israel, and the servant is healed that hour. That's the kid who jumped. A word was enough, with no visit, no sign, and no hand on the back. If your faith looks like that, thank God for it, and don't apologize for trusting faster than the person next to you. That kind of faith made Jesus glad.

Unless I see

And then there's Thomas. If that name is fuzzy, he was one of the twelve, the men Jesus chose to walk with him, so he wasn't a bystander. He was the one, back in John 11:16, who said if Jesus was going to Judea they might as well go and die with him. He was brave enough on a bad day, and still, after the crucifixion, when the others told him they'd seen the risen Lord, it wasn't enough. "Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe." (John 20:24-29)

A week goes by, and Jesus appears to them behind closed doors. Jesus doesn't lecture Thomas from the hallway, and he doesn't make an example of him in front of the group. He comes close and says, "Put your finger here, and see my hands, and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." Thomas answers with the clearest confession in the room: "My Lord and my God."

Jesus met the doubt where it was, and he showed the wounds. Thomas's faith took longer to get off the ladder, but it still counted. This is the reason I think Thomas’s story is in the Bible, so the rest of us see we don’t all get there the same way.

He stays in the water

Scripture keeps showing us this over and over, and a few of the names are easy to slide past if you haven't sat with the stories.

Gideon is one of them. Israel was being raided, and Gideon was so afraid he was threshing wheat down in a winepress so nobody would see the grain and take it. When God called him, he didn't feel ready, so he asked for a sign with a wool fleece, and then he asked for the opposite sign because the first one still didn't settle him. God answered both. You can read that in Judges 6:36-40. It isn't the prettiest faith in the Bible, and God didn't walk off.

The one I keep coming back to though is the father in Mark 9. His boy had been tormented for years. The disciples had already tried to help and couldn't, so the dad brings what's left of his hope to Jesus and says, "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." You can hear the tired in that "if." He's not standing on the dock ready to jump. He's been at this a long time, and the people who were supposed to help have already come up empty.

Jesus answers him, "If you can! All things are possible for one who believes." And the dad doesn't clean it up. He doesn't try to sound like the centurion. He cries out, "I believe; help my unbelief!" That's the ladder, right there in one sentence. There's a part of him that trusts, and a part of him that still needs a hand on his back, and he says both out loud instead of pretending the second part isn't there. Jesus doesn't wait for a tidier prayer. He rebukes the spirit and helps the boy. (Mark 9:14-29) I love that Jesus meets him in the middle of an unfinished sentence.

A woman in Mark 5 had been bleeding for twelve years. She'd spent what she had on doctors and only got worse, and she didn't want a conversation in the middle of a crowd. She just came up behind Jesus and touched the edge of his cloak, sure that would be enough. He stopped, found her, and called her daughter. (Mark 5:25-34) Same stretch of days, outside Jericho, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus heard Jesus was passing and started shouting for mercy. The crowd told him to be quiet, and he got louder. Jesus stopped and gave him his sight. (Mark 10:46-52) One woman didn't want to be seen, and one man wouldn't stop yelling, but it was the same Lord, with a different voice and a different pace.

Now to be clear, none of that means faith can be anything we want it to be. Paul says in Romans 10:17 that it comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. We're trusting a person, and a word he actually said, not whatever feels kind this week. The centurion and Thomas weren't trusting two different Jesuses. One trusted the word from a distance, and one needed to see the wounds up close, but both of them ended up confessing the same Lord.

So, if your faith looks like the jump, don't look down on the person still asking, "You're not gonna let go, right?" And if you're the one on the ladder, don't decide you don't have faith because it doesn't look like theirs. Needing a hand on your back is not the same thing as refusing to get in the water. The question isn't whether you got in the way somebody else did. It's whether you're listening to the same voice, and whether you're willing to get in at all.

He hasn't climbed out on either of you. He's already chest-deep. Some of us trusted the word from the dock, and some of us still need to feel the bottom one more time. Either way, come on in. The water's fine.

~ Charlie