Leaping Faith

When I was in college I took a class on the book of Acts in which we had to learn the primary events of each chapter. The teacher was obsessed with the first event in chapter three--the healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful. There's one phrase in this account that really strikes me. In verse eight when Peter tells our friend the lame man to rise, the Scripture says, "And he leaping up...."
That's fascinating. This man was more than forty years old, we're told, and had never walked. Now, if that's me, I'm going to very gingerly get to my knees and exercise extreme caution placing my feet beneath me for the first time. After all, more than forty years of personal experience have taught me that my legs will not hold me. Not this guy. He had enough faith in Peter's words that he lept up. I wonder how much more power we'd have in our lives if we demonstrated leaping faith instead of crawling faith.
There's another thought I derive from this phrase, but I'll save that for tomorrow.