Trapeze artists don’t seem as plentiful as they once were. But we still see a few around from time to time performing their aerobatics with the same beauty and grace they had in the days when the traveling circus of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey was the greatest show on earth. In those days crowds would gather under the Big Top to enjoy hours of pleasure from the majestic pageantry of elephant led parades, the showiness of brightly dressed performers, the laughter from antics of colorful clowns, and the admiration of courageous wild animal trainers cracking their whips in command of caged lions and tigers. But the highlight event was always the daring performances of the trapeze flyers who challenged injury and death from the top of the giant canopy.

These gifted performers would swing high above the crowd making acrobatic handstands on the swinging bar; performing daring twists and spins in the course of aerobatic flight from the safety of one trapeze to the refuge of another. But those breathtaking moments that defied danger were only to warm the crowd.

Who can ever forget the sight of two high-flyers swinging in synchronized rhythm as one prepared for a spectacular leap not from one trapeze bar to another, but into the saving grasp of the other flyer?  The thrill of the crowd was surpassed only by the confidence of the flyer—a confidence that prompted one inquirer to ask, “What signal do you look for that gives you the confidence to leap from your own trapeze?”

“There is no signal,” the flyer replied, “I simply trust the catcher.”

In a sense, we are all high flyers in this life. We live each day performing the twists and turns required of us. We often perform daring aerobatic flight from the security of one place to the refuge of another in pride of our own self-sufficiency.  But those times are just the warm up.

The main event comes in those times when self-sufficiency can’t get the job done. Those are the highlight events when we must turn loose of our own pride and leap with confidence not from the security of self-sufficiency, but into the saving grasp of another. And if anyone should inquire about our source of confidence, the answer is an easy one.

We simply trust the Catcher.