Life In Space

The Answer to Being “Letdown” is to be “Let Down”

By Chet Gladkowski

After inventing the modern typewriter in 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes struggled to find the best and most efficient keyboard design. Through lots of trial and error, it took him five long years to come up with what we know as the QWERTY layout. In addition to helping people type more efficiently, it reduced the likelihood of the typebars jamming when someone was typing fast. If you can remember this happening to you, then you’re old like me.

Funny thing though, as Sholes tried moving letters all over the place to make typing easier and faster, the humble space key stayed in one place. He rightly discovered that the space key was so important that he turned it into the space bar and put it across the bottom.

You see, the mighty and significant space is the single most used and important character in all the world. It’s between every word, making it by far the most used key. It’s got to be more important than the others because it’s the only key that can be pressed by either hand.

Try to imagine how hard it would be to read something without any spaces. How would you know where one word ended and the next one started? You’d be guessing all the time, trying to figure out what someone was trying to tell you. You’d anxiously be scratching your head as you picked your way through each line. Sentence. Paragraph. Page.

Living With Space

We’re the same way. The most important moments of our day are those brief, quiet spaces that we put in between the hectic, fast-paced, rat race we call life. The silent seconds that separate running from one crisis to another. To another. And another. These spaces help us hold onto any semblance of sanity.

And the time that we most desperately need that space is after being letdown. When someone, or something, has disappointed us so deeply that all the air in the balloon of our life is gone. It might have leaked out slowly over time, or there might have been something so unexpected that it just blew your life apart.

In either case, being letdown has left you empty. Without energy. Without hope. Without meaning and purpose. Without love.

Letdown

Think of it this way. You don’t have to look too long or too far to find someone who’s been letdown. And by letdown, I don’t mean just a little bit disappointed. When someone’s letdown, they’ve been smacked around by life really hard. They’re on the floor and can’t get up.

We’ve all known what being letdown looks like. What it feels like. There was this someone in school we liked, and they couldn’t be less interested in us. In the words of one song, that’s why “they called it puppy love[1]”. Or they said they liked us and then dropped us like a hot potato when someone “cooler” showed interest. Whether or not we knew this, we just became their “steppin’ stone[i][2]”.

There’s that letdown when the floor slowly disappears from beneath our feet. Something’s not been quite right for a while, and you go to the doctor. They drew some blood. They schedule some tests. You get an x-ray. You have an MRI. And after all that, they still don’t know what’s going on. That’s a letdown.

Or it’s that step-off-a-cliff kind of letdown. You find out that someone you love has died. Your boss tells you that your job is gone. The bank informs you that all your money has been withdrawn. Or you discover that the love of your life has been unfaithful. That’s a huge letdown.

We try and handle our letdowns the same way we drive. We don’t need any help. And as we try and deal with it ourselves, the frustration and confusion ramp up. We’re going along and the traffic light of life turns yellow. There’s no way to speed up and “squeeze the lemon” to go through before it’s red. So, we slam on the breaks and stop, delaying our trip by a whole three minutes or so.

The result, we feel letdown. We deserved to make it through that light. We were forced to just sit there, wasting our precious time. Maybe we pick up our phone to fill the minutes scrolling through social media feeds. As we silently fume inside, we know that we’re just too important to be inconvenienced like this.

Let Down

But the truth is that we all need to be letdown sometime. Maybe not letdown emotionally but let down physically with the help of someone else. There will come a time when we need to give up control of our life and let someone else do the heavy lifting for us. Just like that scene in The Chosen[3] where the helpless paralytic is let down through a roof (see Luke 5:18,19), there will be a time that we need that kind of help.

For me, I remember those let down days very well. After being married for less than four months, I was let down by some unknown firemen as they carried me out of my in-laws’ house because I was having symptoms of a heart attack. Or a few years later when I was let down by some unknown men who used a sled to carry me off a snow-covered mountain and into a waiting ambulance because of a shattered ankle.

I’m not in his league, but even the powerful and great Apostle Paul was let down. He came to Christ, and his eyesight was restored. He immediately went out to prove that Jesus is the Son of God (see Acts 9:17-19). It seemed like he had his life all together. He preached and people ran into the Kingdom of God. Churches just popped up all over the place. But there were times that even he needed help to be let down.

When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

Acts 9:23-25 ESV

Like the paralyzed guy who needed forgiveness and healing from Jesus was let down by other, Paul need help escaping a plot to murder him. In both cases, we don’t know how many helped, their names, or what happened to them. Whoever these people were, their identities are safely guarded by God Himself and history. They gave their hands, muscles, and availability at just the right time. They jumped in when help was needed and then vanished from the pages of history.

When it comes to the unknown and unnamed people who served in the Bible, it sounds very old-fashioned. It leaves us with a very unsatisfying feeling and emptiness. We want all the details. Who asked them for help? Who volunteered first? How did they figure out what needed to be done? Where did they go after this? Did they stick together? What other great things did they do?

Today, everyone who helps is labeled a hero. Their pictures, videos, and story immediately go viral on social media. They’re invited to a live spot on network morning shows. We want all the details. We especially want someone to cry with deep emotion and thanksgiving.

Let Down Your Guard

Just like the paralytic and Paul, everyone needs help. We must let someone else give a hand. Think of it this way; we really can’t let ourselves down. We always, always, always need others to be let down at some point in our lives. Even Jesus needed the help of others to be let down.

So he (Joseph of Arimathea) took down Jesus’ body and wrapped it in a long linen cloth and laid it in a new, unused tomb hewn into the rock at the side of a hill.

Luke 23:53 TLB

Why did Jesus need help to be let down from the cross? And why was he let down into a borrowed tomb? Because He was dead. He died to pay that awful price for all our sins (see 1 Corinthians 15:3). He died that we might live (see 2 Corinthians 5:15). He died so we could be made new (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). He died that we could walk in newness of life (see Romans 6:4).

Forgiveness always needs a price to be paid. There is no such thing as free forgiveness. It always comes with a cost. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what was done, someone has to pay.

If you’ve been involved in anything from a minor fender-bender to a big multi-car pileup, there’s always a cost. Yes, you could have talked it out and everybody agrees to just walk away without calling the police or reporting it to the insurance company. If you get it fixed, you’re going to pay. And if you don’t, your car is still running around with that damage.

When someone says that hurtful thing that just destroys you on the inside, forgiveness comes with a cost. Sure, you can say that it’s alright and act like everything’s OK on the inside. But deep down in those places we don’t like to talk about, there’s an open, emotional wound that’s bleeding badly.

Forgiveness and healing only come with a heavy price. And that payment starts when we let down our rights and lay down our lives at the foot of the cross. We lay down not only all our sin, but anything and everything that we think will make God and people like us. When we walk towards Jesus, we walk away from our sin and anything that we thought would bribe God to give us what we want. Both are equally “deadly doings”.

Lay your deadly doing down
Down at Jesus’ feet
Stand in Him and Him alone
Gloriously complete

It is Finished, James Proctor

And like the old hymn says, the only answer is found in Jesus.

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[1]   https://youtu.be/Tu3Frh9SWXc?si=KwkljxtH7rmoFgoJ

[2]   https://youtu.be/dzgZJKoxnBw?si=eAdWIP6GawculCXp

[3] https://youtu.be/dlBOmQ1PaMY?si=cf7ZLgrt496sJbNu

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Chet Gladkowski spent his professional career in the insurance technology arena to help people. Now, Chet uses his memorable and unique communication skills, coupled with digital media, to approach the pain, issues, and heartache that people face today. Since we can’t fix or heal ourselves, we must look at someone else. And that someone else is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ as the answer to our greatest need.

Chet’s upcoming book, ServeLife^® – How Serving Unlocks Your Purpose, walks you through how your life and purpose are just like a stack of pancakes

Feature Image by ChatGPT