When I Fall, I Shall Arise

Five days, one line. When I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. The week gathered up, with what it deliberately did not claim, and where to go from here.

Micah 7:8; John 8:36; Romans 8:1, 21

Opening

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Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

Micah 7:8 (KJV)

The line that holds the whole week together. It is spoken to an enemy who hoped the fall was final.

HEBREW

קוּםqum

KOOM

to rise, to stand up, to get up

This is the verb in Micah 7:8, qamti, I have risen, set right next to naphalti, I have fallen, with nothing between them. It is one of the most common verbs in the Hebrew Bible. It is what a person does after sitting, lying down or falling.

As the third day noted, the rare word from the first day of this week comes from this same verb. In Leviticus 26:13 God says He broke the bars of the yoke and made His people go upright, qomemiyut, a noun built from qum. So the week begins and ends on one Hebrew root. God makes the freed slave stand up straight, and God raises the one who has fallen.

The Week in One Line

If you remember only one line from this week, remember Micah's. When I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

In Hebrew the heart of it is two words side by side. I have fallen. I have risen. Nothing stands between them, and the rising is spoken as if it is already done.

That is freedom in Christ as this week has described it. You were brought into the house as a son, and you stay there on your worst day. The Spirit is lengthening your fuse, slowly. When you fall, you are not put back on trial. When you are frustrated, God asks you a question instead of striking you. And when your mouth has failed, Jesus lights a fire, cooks breakfast and gives you work.

As the third day showed, the verb for rising here, qum, is the same root as the rare word on the first day. God made His people go upright. The week began with standing up straight, and it ends with getting back up. Both are His work in you.

REFLECT

Do this today: write Micah 7:8 on a card and put it where you work. When you fall, read it once, out loud, and then get up and do the next thing.

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

A Two-Minute Prayer

Lord, when I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, You are my light. Thank You for this week. Keep me standing upright in Your house. Amen.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

Seen from low on a dark hillside at dawn, a single figure in a mantle stands upright at the crest, seen from behind, looking out over a wide valley where a thin line of first gold light lies along the far horizon. Behind him on the slope, scuffed marks show where he fell on the way up. — When I fall, I shall arise (Micah 7:8). The week began with standing upright and ends with getting back up.

The Five Days

Day one: Free Indeed. Jesus told a crowd that had never admitted to being enslaved that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Then He described two people in one house. A slave can be sent away; a son belongs to it forever. In Leviticus 26:13 God breaks the bars of the yoke and makes His people go upright, using a word found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Freedom has a posture, and it is a lifted head.

Day two: A Longer Fuse. Paul put rage in the same list as the sins we would never commit. Then he named the fruit of the Spirit, including longsuffering, a word built from long and temper. In Exodus 34 God proclaims Himself longsuffering to Moses, the man who had smashed the first tablets. God proclaimed His patience to a man who had broken what God gave him.

Day three: Wretched Man, Free Man. Paul cried out that he was wretched, thanked God in the next breath, and then wrote a verdict: there is therefore now no condemnation. At its centre were Micah's two words, I have fallen, I have risen, and the courtroom word katakrima. The sentence was carried out on sin in Christ, so your fall is not a new trial.

Day four: Doest Thou Well to Be Angry? Jonah sat under a plant that came up in a night, and burned with anger when it withered. God answered with a question. The Greek translators rendered his burning as grief. The whole creation groans under frustration, and the Spirit takes hold of the other end of the load. Anger laid down before sleep gives the devil no foothold.

Day five: A Fire of Coals. Peter cursed and swore by one charcoal fire. After the resurrection Jesus lit another, cooked him breakfast, asked him three times and gave him work three times. John uses that word for a charcoal fire only twice, at the denial and at the restoration. The mouth that cursed became the mouth that preached.

Two small fires burn far apart on a long dark shoreline at night, one on the left in a stone courtyard wall's shadow, one on the right on the open beach with the first dawn light behind it. A faint line of footprints in the sand runs from the first fire to the second. — The only two charcoal fires in the New Testament: one where Peter denied, one where he was restored. The footprints run from the first to the second.

Where the Week Sits in the Story

This week began in the MINISTRY of Jesus, at the Feast of Tabernacles, where He spoke of slavery and freedom against the memory of the EXODUS. God's first word at Sinai named Egypt the house of bondage, and Jesus spoke of a better house, where the Son stays forever.

From there the week went to the CHURCH, to Paul's letters to believers learning to live free without going back under the law, and learning that freedom is a life led by the Spirit. It went back further, to the time of the KINGDOM, where a prophet sulked about God's mercy under a withered plant. And it ended in the RESURRECTION, on a beach at dawn, where the risen Jesus restored a friend who had failed Him.

The thread through all of it is the one Paul names in Romans 8. The whole creation groans, subject to frustration, waiting to be set free into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Freedom is where the story is going. It is not only a feeling you have on good days. It is the end God is bringing the whole world to, and He has already brought you into it as a son.

What This Week Did Not Claim

The week did not say three things that are easy to hear by mistake.

It did not say that anger is always sin. God is angry in Scripture, slowly and justly. Paul says be ye angry, and sin not. The week said that anger kept, fed and aimed at people becomes sin, and that the Spirit grows a longer fuse.

It did not say that your tools are demonic. The feeling that something dark is at work is real, and the battle Paul describes is real. But Ephesians places the devil's foothold in anger kept overnight, not in a machine. The front line is your own heart and mouth, which is good news, because you can bring those to God tonight.

It did not promise that you will stop falling. In Romans 7 the struggle is still there in the verse after the thanks. The voice in Micah fell through its own sin. Peter fell after the best three years of his life. The promise is not that you will not fall. It is that you will arise, that there is no condemnation, and that there is a fire on the shore.

Shalom - Peace — Four minutes on the Hebrew word shalom. It teaches that peace in the Bible is not only calm but wholeness restored, which is where freedom in Christ is heading.BibleProject

A single clay oil lamp burns with a tall steady flame on a rough wooden table in an otherwise dark room, seen close and a little from above. Beside it lies an open scroll, and the lamp's gold light falls in a small warm circle. — Longsuffering is heat that burns slowly. The Spirit does not put the flame out; He steadies it.

Carry This Forward

I will keep Micah 7:8 where I work, lay my anger down before I sleep, and when I fall, I will confess it within the minute and get back up.

LEAVING AT THE CROSS

The belief that my place in the house depends on my last day’s work
The anger I have kept overnight
The shame of a mouth that has cursed

RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS

A son’s place, forever
A verdict of no condemnation, now
A fire on the shore, and the words: follow Me

Further Your Learning

RELATED SCRIPTURES

FOR DEEPER STUDY

Videos, all from official channels and all checked for playback on this site. BibleProject: “Gospel of John Summary: A Complete Animated Overview (Part 1)” and “(Part 2)”; “The Repeating Pattern from The Exodus You May Not Have Noticed”; “Sin Is Not Rule-Breaking”; “Book of Galatians Summary: A Complete Animated Overview”; “Why the Holy Spirit Isn’t Just a Force”; “Why a Good God Gets Angry”; “Book of Romans Summary: A Complete Animated Overview (Part 1)” and “(Part 2)”; “Book of Jonah Summary: A Complete Animated Overview”; “Shalom – Peace”. Gospel in Life (Timothy Keller) sermons: “Perfect Freedom” (Romans 6); “How to Change” (Galatians); “Patience” (Romans 12); “The Healing of Anger” (Proverbs); “Should I Not Love that Great City?” (Jonah 4); “Encountering the Risen Jesus” (John 21); “Peace”. Free primary texts, all public domain and online. Martin Luther, Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), in the Wace and Buchheim translation, at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, chapters 8 to 10, at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, at Project Gutenberg. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, homily 14, at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, at Project Gutenberg. C. H. Spurgeon, sermon 2069, “My Own Personal Holdfast,” at spurgeongems.org.

BACK TO SERIES

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CLIPPINGS

BEFORE YOU GO

Anything you want to keep from today?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

EUANGELION

The Week in One Line

If you remember only one line from this week, remember Micah's. When I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

In Hebrew the heart of it is two words side by side. I have fallen. I have risen. Nothing stands between them, and the rising is spoken as if it is already done.