I have traveled to New Zealand four times for work. I paid for nothing while I was there (yes, please feel free to experience a scintilla of jealousy right about now!). Two coworkers and I decided to take an escorted Jeep trip down a canyon trail. We would savor a relaxed lunch at the bottom, hang out, enjoy nature, and then travel back to the top. It sounded rugged and almost expedition-like—an adventure for us city folk.
We started at a sustainable amount of excitement. The gently used utility vehicle sported no doors, had a canvas roof, and sat ten people—very safari-like. Of course, I landed in one of the seats near a gap where a closed door should’ve been—so close that if I moved my foot a few inches to the left, it would drag along the dirt road.
We all joked about being early pioneers in a new, undiscovered land. I didn’t realize at that moment how close we would come to being the skeletons of primitive cave dwellers.
As we continued the forty-five-minute descent along the side of the canyon, the jovial conversation slowly ground to a terrified halt as the road became more and more narrow. We also noted that as the width of the path became more restricted, the speed of the dented dirt-brown vehicle did not. Although we probably never traveled faster than twenty miles an hour, we were going down the sheer side of a cliff with unlimited, anfractuous, blind turns and twists. I unwisely looked out the open space where a closed door should have been and saw that for the most part, we were never more than a foot from the edge of the precipice. I could actually see the drop of several hundred feet and birds flying below us. Flying below us! I’m sure they were vultures.
Although the driver and escort appeared totally at peace with the vehicle careening down the hill at what seemed to the rest of us like NASCAR speed, everything in me screamed, “For the love of all things holy, slow down!”
But for some reason, there was a catch in my throat, and I couldn’t get the words out. We’ve all felt those moments before, when our emotions can rise only so high, keeping us safe from exploding or imploding. At that particular moment, I realized no one was yelling. I glanced around to see everyone else with the same pasty-white, no-blood-to-the-brain, mouths-agape-in-a-silent-scream, terror-filled, frozen expression, likely wondering, Did I tell everyone I love them before I left?
Everyone in the duct-taped jalopy was desperately peering at me. In retrospect, I assume they were looking at me because I was closest to the open space where a door should’ve been but wasn’t and, therefore, should’ve been the one to activate an inflatable slide in the event of an emergency landing. I frantically prayed I would pass out before we hit the bottom of the canyon. I also prayed we didn’t have a homicidal maniac as a tour guide.
Then it started to rain. Just a small drizzle, really, but those drops of water might as well have been a monsoon to those of us in mortal jeopardy.
Amazingly and miraculously, the rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. The tour guide, driving with one hand and holding a microphone with his other, gleefully told us something about something—maybe the history of the flora in the area. I don’t know. I defy any person in that group to remember or care the slightest bit about what he was saying. Like telling a skydiver whose parachute failed to open that a bird had just pooped on his head.
Just as all hope for survival was lost, we rounded a bend, and I heard an audible gasp from every person in that doom-clunker.
The canyon opened up onto the most incredible view I had ever seen. A lush, verdant green vista spread out before us in every direction. Still well above the tree line, we saw nothing human-made for miles. Rising from one end of the horizon, blazing across the azure sky, and nestling on the other end of the horizon, framing the life-filled valley, was a dazzling, perfect double rainbow. The view was vast and breathtaking; we experienced the pure beginning of the bands of color from one end of the valley to the perfectly pristine other end. The spectrum of colors was immaculate. No fuzzy lines. A finished prism of light.
Only one sound irritated the moment: the grinding of tires over gravel as we continued down the compressed path. I can’t remember how long I held my breath, but I recognized the holiness of the moment. I understood that catch in my chest, where the emotional impact seemed to settle and then move into tears. I couldn’t physically fully express my unadulterated emotion at that moment. I had no choice in the presence of such a miracle. I slid off the seat I’d been holding with a death grip just thirty seconds before and silently lifted my praise and thankfulness to the Lord. He’d created that spectacular display of power, and I marveled at his creative genius. I thanked him for reminding me in that reverent moment that he was still on his throne, and he was still in control.
When I got back into my seat, I noticed that once again, the other passengers were all staring at me. But this time, I didn’t care.
There are countless other times I’ve experienced the catch. Moments and snapshots of the Holy Spirit nudging me forward when it might have been painful at first.
One night, at the prison where I lead Celebrate Recovery step-studies, I was talking to an inmate. He believed in Jesus, but he had yet to become a follower. He knew everything he needed to know to become a Christian, but he couldn’t make the leap for some reason.
As we talked, I asked Brad about his family. He paused and then said, “I’ve never told anyone this. But my father beat me. When I was a kid, I wasn’t afraid or ashamed to cry or show emotion or hug. My father said it was a sign of weakness. So he was going to, in his words, force me to be a man. He would then proceed to beat me and tell me he was going to keep hitting me until I stopped crying.”
My heart leaped into my throat. The anger, betrayal, and abandonment Brad must have experienced tugged at me until my own tears came. “Brad, that’s why you have such a hard time trusting the Lord. You’re scared to death he will hurt you if you trust him.”
Brad looked intently at me. But he didn’t cry. The bar for his catch had been set extremely high. I had total faith it would happen. He would surrender. I never pushed him. But I told him he needed to hurry up and give his heart to Jesus. I needed to move him from the accept-Jesus column on my prayer list over to the plans-for-Brad’s-life column.
Another time, my friend Jack and I were exchanging catch experiences. He described a messy event that preceded a catch moment that stemmed from an agonizing encounter. Thanks to a stressful job, Jack usually left work every day anxious and frustrated, as did most of the other employees. He needed to know if it was the management or his attitude that was way off. Jack asked the Lord to help him understand where the problems originated.
Jack attended a business networking lunch along with the owner of the establishment he worked for—the person he felt was causing a great deal of grief and discord. As part of the networking for the business, Jack attended weekly meetings with that particular group. The secretary for the crowd had been away on vacation for a couple of weeks. Because Jack was not yet a member, his contact information hadn’t been entered into their computer system as quickly as the owner thought it should have been.
After the meeting, the owner walked up to the secretary. He began to verbally annihilate her because she’d failed to get Jack’s email set up for correspondence. The man was a churchgoing self-proclaimed follower of Jesus.
Once she was close to tears, the owner berated her for poor math skills. She’d announced in the meeting that 90 ninety of the group members had attended—twenty-five of thirty. He made sure she understood that twenty-five was not 90 percent of thirty and wondered why she would make such a statement.
The president of the chapter heard the aggression and moved over, as did the incoming president, to intervene. Within a matter of minutes, the temperature in the room became intense.
Jack stood back, dumbfounded that a follower of Jesus Christ would ever treat someone so horribly. He deliberately positioned himself behind the owner and mouthed, “I am so sorry,” to the secretary.
She said, “It’s okay.” Then she left the room.
Jack wanted to explode. The catch was there. It stopped him for once. But I’m confident it was only because of Jack’s need of job security.
Then, in the car on the way back to work, the owner announced that at the prior week’s meeting, one of the guys—a member of XYZ church—had made an off-color remark. Apparently, the statement was supposed to justify the owner’s reckless display of rage. At least he didn’t say anything “off-color.”
Jack’s heart grieved for the rest of the day. He held himself together for the last three hours of work, but the minute he sat down in his car, he began to shake. He tried to come up with any possible scenario in which the action in the meeting could have been justified. There wasn’t one. Jack kept thinking of the poor lady trying to defend herself against someone who was, in every respect, a bully.
My eyes brimmed with tears as Jack detailed how the Lord healed his heart that afternoon.
It rained that day. It seemed another narrow, twisting, winding, anfractuous path lay in front of Jack. The heartache and bitterness were getting to a specific point and pausing just there, a nebulous area he was unable to navigate. He prayed, Okay, Holy Spirit, interpret my groaning. Just as he reached the top of the hill, about a mile from his house, Jack glanced to his right, and there it was—the catch.
The sun was setting. A brilliant display of bright yellow, dusty orange, burgundy, and bluish purple—a God-sent eye feast. Seriously, who besides God could put orange and purple together and make it look good? It never even worked for Howard Johnson.
God was right there. Jack pulled into his driveway, turned the car around, and sat in the silence. He felt the glory of Psalm 65:8 (MSG) as the tears began to flow: “Far and wide they’ll come to a stop, they’ll stare in awe, in wonder. Dawn and dusk take turns calling, ‘Come and worship.’” So Jack did.
The next day, he sent an email to the secretary and apologized.
I’m so sorry for the bullying you had to face yesterday. I don’t believe you were treated with integrity. Nor do I believe you were shown much respect. I need you to know that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. And I don’t believe that when we face eternity, God will care one bit about when you set up my email or what percentage of enrolled members attended the meeting. What he will remember is if or how we shared the glory of his precious Son, Jesus.
All we can do in these bodies is throw our arms up in praise and worship; wonder and awe; and even pain, grief, and fear, because we’re incapable of fully expressing the depth of love, joy, and need we feel.
But there is soon coming a time when the catch will no longer be part of our makeup. The quick intake of breath, that gasp of wonder and amazement because our senses are accosted with something breathtakingly magnificent, will be normal and will finally be our home.
There will come a time when these frail, time-sensitive bodies will be different. I believe God has placed the catch in us as a taste of what’s to come to keep us yearning for our future home. Graveclothes dropped and veil lifted, we will see Jesus face-to-face. We will finally know the beauty that he alone saw in us at Calvary. Our bodies will be metamorphosed and made responsive to an entirely new, fresh atmosphere. We will be fully released to express the limitless, eternal, inexhaustible thankfulness we have always desired to lay at his feet.
Psalm 56:8 (NLT) says, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”
It’s a balm to me, a comfort, to know it’s okay to have days when I want my praise to rise higher. When the worship I want to express is not as full, complete, loud, or finished as my heart longs for it to be and can only be expressed in grateful tears. One day Jesus will show me a bottle in which he’s saved every catch, every tear he has caught, I’ll know just how cherished and precious they are to him.
Finally, unrestrained and unfettered by earthly barriers, I will proclaim and shout from without what he has made me from within: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
