It was not just the weight of the cross that made the Lord Jesus fall but the many sufferings that He had experienced for the past twelve hours or more which included the physical hardships such as the scourging, the beatings, the slapping, and the emotional trauma such as the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the lies of the witnesses, the attacks of the Pharisees, and many more that caused His fall. He was very weak, with no sleep at all perhaps, and worst of all, He was surely bleeding! Just imagine having to undergo a hurriedly conducted trial and sentencing within less than a day, that is, less than 24 hours. He was arrested at about 8 in the evening of Thursday and was dead by 3 in the afternoon of Friday. Talk about speedy justice. If the Philippine courts are that fast in conducting trials, there would be no backlog of cases in the country - but then again, what about the quality of output?
Many times in our lives we also fall. And almost all of the time we get angry when we do fall. We don't want to fall. We don't want to fail. We don't want to suffer. We don't want crosses in our lives! We want to succeed, to remain standing, to be always happy and comfortable!
But by falling, our Lord Jesus showed His humanity. Gods don't fall. Gods don't bleed. Gods don't feel weakness. But God wanted to show mankind that He truly cares. He was not like the gods of other religions who demanded servitude from the people. He is a God who wishes to relate intimately with the people He created and shared His love with. He wants to befriend mankind which He started with Abraham, our father in the faith. So He sent His only begotten Son to show the world how much humanity weighs for Him [see John 3:16]. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, became man like us so that He may suffer, become weak and bleed with us. God became man, became weak, became vulnerable to show mankind that only by being weak that we shall know the strength of God, by suffering that we can experience His glory, and by being vulnerable that we shall understand His power.
Therefore when we fall, when we fail, when we suffer, we must remember the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not have to undergo all that He went through for the sake of showing that He can: He is not a performer, an escape artist or a survivor game contestant! He went through all those sufferings because of love: love for humanity so that "no one will be lost!" [see Matthew 18: 12-14].
God doesn't want us to suffer for the sake of suffering. He is not a sadist. He doesn't want us to suffer at all. But as the Bible says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child!" [Proverbs 13:24]. He won't pamper us because it would lead us to a wrong way and destination. Life on earth is not yet heaven where we shall experience eternal happiness. We are still on the journey towards it and along the way we shall fall not just once, perhaps even more than three. Important thing is whenever we fall we must rise up again!
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