Growing up during the Great Depression and living through World War II, my mom’s makeup was one of steel. I don’t think she qualified as a Steel Magnolia from the South like those women portrayed in the movie of the same name. She was more of the True Grit variety. Born and bread in the heart of Texas, her spirit was one of willpower and survival. As a young girl, she and her brother, Ed, chased and killed rattlesnakes because their rattlers brought a whopping thirteen cents apiece.
When she was twenty-nine years old, she was told she would die due to a birth defect in her heart, if she didn’t quit smoking. She did stop. Cold turkey. One day she was puffing away on an untold number of cigarettes, and the next, she was not.
“Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” was her operatus mondi. Many times when facing challenges of any kind, I was told that was what I needed to do. Giving her my opinion that not everyone was built that way, it wasn’t until much later in life, that my mom understood she wasn’t also. Truth be told.
No one comes into this world wearing bootstraps.
We do come in with the idea of being able to pull ourselves up by them, but where did that come from anyway? Probably when Eve took the first bite of forbidden fruit. Satan, in the form of the snake—who at that time did have legs, but lost them (read Genesis 3:14)—basically told her, “If you eat of this tree, you will know good from evil and will be able to do any and everything on your own. You will be like God.” (Italics – my paraphrase).
The delicious and eye-catching temptation was too much to resist.
Eve believed the lie.
Knowing beyond any doubt, she would now be like God, Eve grew a spiritual pair of bootstraps. What was born in her at that moment was the determination to be autonomous, doing life her way.
As God had warned, with that bite, evil and death, the sting of sin, flooded the world. Invading every molecule of air and earth, while integrating into each microscopic bit of our DNA, like fish surrounded by water, we, immersed into its very essence, are bound to it, destined to die, and totally separated from God, the Father of Lights. (See James 1:16-18.)
In incredible love though, God already had a plan. Jesus was poised and ready to step into our world to take our sin from us. His purpose in removing it was to give back to us what we lost. To reunite us with our Heavenly Father. In John 14:6 TLB:
“Jesus told him, “I am the Way—yes, and the Truth and the Life. No one can get to the Father except by means of me.”
Instead of doing it “our way,” Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 TLB.
Instead of believing the lie of the bootstraps—that it’s up to us, to change our hearts, do or die— Jesus tells us, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Only Jesus can set us free from the sin—jealousy, selfishness, lying, to name a few—that lives in all our hearts.
Coming to earth that was thrust into darkness at the Fall of mankind, Jesus is the “light that leads to life,” (John 8:12 ESV) and reunites us, as Adam and Eve once were, with God, the Father.
In John 14:19-21 NLT, Jesus tells His disciples, “Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”
In Deuteronomy 30:19 NLT, the Bible tells us,
“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!”
Only Jesus is that life. Choose Him. He came to save us from what we fell into so very long ago.
When are we going to stop believing the lie that we can do life without God?
“Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.”
Heavenly Father, Please forgive me for constantly pulling up bootstraps I don’t even have. Please deliver me from trying to live life—whether I know it or not— apart from You. Please continue to pull the scales from my eyes, giving me salve so I can see You more clearly, following You with my whole heart. You are faithful and are working all this, by Your grace, into my heart. You are doing it! Praises! In Jesus name. Amen
Kimberly
So many times my first instinct is to “pull up my bootstraps”….thinking I need to be strong. Thank you for this wonderful reminder!