The Leap That Looked Like Falling

At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, a lanky twenty-one-year-old from Portland, Oregon, did something no one had ever seen. While every other high jumper in the world went over the bar face-down using the straddle technique, Dick Fosbury turned his back to the bar, leaped, and arched over it headfirst — facing the sky.

The crowd gasped. Commentators mocked his unorthodox style. Coaches shook their heads. Everything about his approach looked wrong. You don't clear a bar by turning away from it. You don't jump by falling backward. And yet, when Fosbury cleared seven feet, four and a quarter inches, he won the gold medal — and changed the sport forever. Today, virtually every competitive high jumper in the world uses the Fosbury Flop.

Faith often asks us to do what looks like falling. Abraham left Ur without a map. Moses walked toward the sea, not away from it. Peter stepped out of the only boat he had. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It is the willingness to turn your back on what everyone else calls safe and leap — trusting that the God who calls you will also catch you.

The world will tell you it looks foolish. The Almighty says, "Jump anyway." Sometimes the only way over the bar is to stop staring at it and trust the One who designed you to fly.