{"id":5136,"date":"2026-01-05T08:49:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T13:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5136"},"modified":"2026-01-05T08:49:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T13:49:45","slug":"keeping-us-from-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/05\/keeping-us-from-falling\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Us from Falling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

Elisha Otis once risked his business, his reputation, and his life with one stroke of an ax.

Looking down on the crowd at the Crystal Palace Exposition in New York in 1853, Otis gave the signal to chop the only rope that held him suspended on a platform high above the masses.

The crude elevator immediately began to fall.\u00a0There were gasps and screams. But after just a couple of inches, the platform stopped.\u00a0“All safe, gentlemen, all safe!” cried Otis.

And just like that, the man who had sold only three elevators the year before became the world’s number one dealer.

To this day, the Otis Elevator Company is, according to their website,\u00a0“the world’s largest manufacturer and maintainer of people-moving products, including elevators, escalators, and moving walkways.”\u00a0\u00a0

Elisha Otis didn’t invent\u00a0the elevator.\u00a0Those had been around for years.\u00a0What he made possible was a\u00a0safe<\/em> elevator – one that wouldn’t plunge catastrophically if anything were to happen to the suspension rope.\u00a0

His secret was a heavy spring\u00a0that was held in check by the weight on the rope.\u00a0As soon as the rope\u00a0was severed, the spring released a pair of giant claws that\u00a0jammed into a jagged track, holding the elevator in place.\u00a0

Otis’ brake transformed the world’s skylines.\u00a0Up to that point, buildings\u00a0rarely exceeded 10 stories in height. After all, transporting people and furniture up so many flights of stairs got old pretty quickly. Safe and predictable elevators, along with the invention of steel girders,\u00a0ushered in the era of the skyscraper.

Over the years, elevators have proven to be safer than any other form of transportation.\u00a0

Still, many\u00a0of us feel\u00a0a bit queasy\u00a0when we hit that button and pause long enough to grasp that we’re traveling\u00a0in a closed metal box within a windowless, vertical\u00a0shaft.\u00a0

What if both the suspension cable and the brakes were to fail simultaneously?

That actually happened once.\u00a0\u00a0

In 1945, a U.S. military pilot accidentally flew his plane into the side of the fog-obscured Empire State Building, which at the time was the tallest building in the world.\u00a0Fire began to spread through the upper floors.\u00a0A woman named Betty Lou Oliver raced for the elevator.\u00a0The fire had already weakened both the cables and the braking system, however.\u00a0The former snapped and the latter failed.

Betty Lou’s elevator plunged a nightmarish 75 stories, all the way to the basement.

And she survived.

Forensic analysts\u00a0still wonder how she pulled it\u00a0off.\u00a0The best theory is that the car was moving so quickly that it compressed the air in the shaft beneath her. Think of the resistance you feel when you push down on a bicycle pump. The piled-up air provided the elevator\u00a0a soft landing.

Thus, the next time you’re in a high-rise elevator with someone who’s battling anxiety, just smile and say, “Don’t worry, Betty Lou Oliver’s got us covered.”\u00a0

What Elisha Otis did 173\u00a0years ago represented an amazing act of faith.

You simply don’t cut the support rope that is holding you up\u00a0unless you know for sure something else is going to\u00a0keep you from falling.\u00a0\u00a0

Jesus asks us to do that all the time.\u00a0\u00a0

There’s no end to the variety of \u201cropes and cables\u201d that people believe will keep them safe.\u00a0Some depend on luck. Things always work out in the end, right?\u00a0Others bet their security on their looks.\u00a0Or their health.\u00a0But both will fail. Still others trust their future\u00a0to their ability to manage\u00a0things \u2013 their customers, their family, their circumstances.\u00a0But if you’re counting on being able to control the details of your own life, you’re in for a rapid descent.\u00a0\u00a0

Every one of those wannabe suspension ropes will ultimately fail.

But that’s OK: They were never intended\u00a0to keep us safe, anyways.\u00a0\u00a0

Our security lies in what can only be described as the Bible’s greatest elevator verses:\u00a0“Now to him who is able to keep you from falling,\u00a0and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy\u2014\u00a0to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!” (Jude 24-25)

God is not only able<\/em> to keep us from falling in this new year. He’s willing,<\/em> too.

That’s the one and only thing that can keep\u00a0us going up<\/em>, both in this world and the next.\u00a0
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Elisha Otis once risked his business, his reputation, and his life with one stroke of an ax. Looking down on the crowd at the Crystal Palace Exposition in New York in 1853, Otis gave the signal to chop the only rope that held him suspended on a platform high above the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1049,767,132],"class_list":["post-5136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-elevators","tag-falling","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}