BETTER TO STUMBLE IN LOVE

 > BETTER TO STUMBLE IN LOVE

Better to stumble in love than to stand unshaken in a life untouched. There is a way of walking that avoids every crack in the road, that measures each step so carefully it never risks falling—but it never reaches anyone either. It preserves itself, but it does not give life. It speaks truths that are correct, clean, and cold, like stones arranged in perfect order, yet nothing grows there.

But love does not walk this way.

Love moves forward with trembling hands. It reaches before it is certain. It speaks before it is safe. And in doing so, it falters—missteps, misjudges, misunderstands. Yet every stumble carries warmth. Every failure bears the imprint of a heart that refused to remain closed. What breaks in love does not remain broken; it becomes soil, and in that soil, something unseen begins to rise.

To stumble in love is to enter the mystery of redemption.

For love does not measure success by triumph, but by surrender. It does not ask, “Was I flawless?” but “Did I give myself?” And where the answer is yes—even in weakness, even in error—there is life moving beneath the surface. There is a pulse that cannot be silenced.

The world may call this foolishness. It may honor the unfallen, the untouched, the ones who keep their distance and call it wisdom. But heaven bends toward the ones who tried, who reached, who gave themselves away and found themselves wounded in the act. These are the ones whose lives echo with something eternal.

For everything touched by love refuses to stay dead.

Even regret softens. Even loss begins to open. Even the cross—where love seemed to collapse under the weight of the world—becomes the place where life breaks through death. What appears as failure is gathered, held, and transformed.

So do not fear the stumble.

Fear the life that never risked loving. Fear the heart that remained untouched, unbroken, unmoved. For it is better to fall forward into the arms of love than to stand forever outside its reach.

Better to stumble in love—

and live.  

Pastor Steven G. Lee 

St. GMC Corps

April 21, 2026