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| I believe God's up there somewhere. |
Comic, Tig Notaro, has a hilarious take on one phenomenon of social media, where people post photos of every day events (Sort of like this blog). It's not the posting that bothers her so much, it's the question, "Can you believe it?" (Such as: A picture of Joey's first day in kindergarten. Can you believe it?) Notaro says yes I can believe the natural progression of life, but if you had said that Joey skipped kindergarten, moved right on to MIT, graduated in six months, and landed a lunar module while simultaneously performing somersaults with the Flying Walindas, then, well maybe I can't believe that. Hal Shrader, pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church, opened his sermon with this story and began his message titled, 'Beyond imagination or to paraphrase, Can you believe it?'. The text he was analyzing referred to the promise God made to Abraham (Basically, that his seed would be as plentiful as the stars in the sky). Abraham believed God, but he couldn't imagination how it would happen. At the time he was very old, as was his wife, Sarah, and they had been blessed with no children. It was hard for him to believe that his seed would number more than the stars in the sky. It was harder yet for him to believe that his would be a name great among men. So God told Abraham to gather a three year old heifer, a three year old goat, a three year old ram, a pigeon and a dove. He was told to butcher these by splitting them in half (Not the birds) and laying them out, the halves side by side. This is interesting on many levels, not the least of which is that it was completely out of the ordinary (In these times, the hierarchy was such that alms were 'kicked up'. Serfs worked the land. The land owners paid the lords; the lords paid the king; etc.). It was unheard of that as powerful a force as God Almighty would humble himself to make a covenant with a mere man. But he promised (symbolized by the split animals), "...I may be torn in two if I fail to serve you...." It is hard to imagine, but Pastor Shrader connected God's Old Testament promise to Abraham to the continuing New Testament promise to all of us related by Paul to the Ephesians which says, in part, that Christianity will live in our hearts through faith: the height, the length, and the depth of God's love has no bounds. Can you believe it? Can you believe that all nations, all tongues, all tribes are welcome to be part of this mystery? I can believe it, but I can't imagine it. And this brings me back to Pastor Shrader's challenge of the day, "What kind of person do people see when they see me? Do they see Jesus? I've been thinking about that. What DO people see when they see me? I don't know, but I do know that I've been blessed with the opportunity to impact a few people. I try to be the best steward I can be, which makes life good, especially today.
God lives here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And sometimes here. Can you believe it?
I Believe!!!!!!!
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