Bring Me A Worm...

"Bring me a worm that can understand a man and I will bring you a man that can understand the triune God."--John Wesley

Over the years I have encountered many people who struggle with their belief in God because they cannot figure out why something happened, or didn't happen.  In college, I had a philosophy professor who revealed that his family had experienced a terrible tragedy.  He told us about his brother and the way that cancer had destroyed his body.

My professor went on to tell the class that his family had been a Bible believing group who spent hours, upon hours praying for healing for his brother.  In the end, his brother succumbed to cancer and the professor reasoned that there could be no God.  He ranted that a loving God would have healed his brother and answered his family's prayers.

At one time or another, to one degree, we have all been there.  We have prayed earnest prayers and asked out of all the right reasons to no avail.  It is not a good feeling.  We begin to say God why didn't you......

There is a flaw in this thinking, however.  When we assume that God has to answer our prayers we get our perspective backwards.  Because we serve a good God he often does provide us with our wants, but we exist to please God, not the other way around.  When a potter forms clay into a vase, the purpose of the vase is to bring pleasure to the artist that formed it.  It is not the place of the creator to spend time trying to please the vase.

Those that dismiss God because they say science disproves his existence, or that believe he cannot be real because he chose not to do something for them fail to reason about God from the right point of view.  If we begin with an open mind and admit that God could exist then we have to also say that  He  would be the originator, the creator.

If He is the creator, then He has the ability to do things that science cannot explain (creating matter, breathing life into a life-less object, etc.).  You see science does not say that God cannot exist, science says that if God exists he has to be able to do things that we can't do, can't understand, and can't explain.  Man has simply become so self absorbed and so self important that he believes he must be able to figure out everything. If a God who is capable of breaking our scientific "laws" is real, then all the things we are certain about are no longer absolutes.

Those that believe God has to answer when they call, suffer from a closely related delusion.  They believe that they must be the center of God's universe.  If there is a more powerful being then He must exist to make us happy, to wait breathlessly at our beck-and-call.  God could not possibly see a bigger picture than we can through our limited perspective, and what we want always must be what is best.  In reality, sometimes what we want, even with good intentions is not what is best, even if we think it is.

We are but worms, and we cannot understand.....

Our Amazing, Everyday God

God.  Even just writing the name seems like I should blow it up, put it in italics, and make it bold.   

GOD!
Yes, much better.  

In a way, this is exactly how it should be.  If we thought about God's name this way all the time imagine how things would change.  If we put this much emphasis on making sure that we held everything to do with God as holy, then we might not hear His name used in vain so much.   Would we feel a little more special when we bowed our heads and called out, "God, my God..."?

I think sometimes we forget who we have the privilege of calling on, and serving, and calling Father.  I think we forget the awe that should come by communicating to the One who called out into the darkness and created everything.  When we speak it's not just God that listens.  It's  God that listens.  It's the hands that split the Red Sea, the voice that shattered the walls at Jerricho, The God that tilted the earth to the perfect angle.  A half degree one way we freeze, a half degree the other way we fry.  God is amazing!

It would be so easy for us to get caught up in this greatness and believe that we couldn't access a God like that.  It would be easy to reason that a God who deals in such gigantic absolutes doesn't have time for little ole' me.  Then we remember Jesus.  As much as God calls for caps and magnitude, Jesus calls for a breathless gasp of awe, a whisper of almost unbelief, that unspoken, "it's really him" tone in our voice.

Why?  Because he could have done anything.  God incarnate!  With a word, "Angels", and winged creatures would have swooped down with a ferocity that no Sci-Fi flick could duplicate, no CGI could mimic.  With a whisper, He could have laid waist to the Romans.  He could have flung the nails that pierced his hands past the edge of eternity.  He could have done all this, but he didn't, that's why the all but silent awe.  That's why God is not unreachable.  He put on skin, he dwelled with us.  He cried when his friend died, he laughed when his friends acted stupid by a midnight fire by the Sea.  

The greatest mystery of our faith is not creation, or the flood, or the miracles of Jesus.  The greatest mystery of our faith is why Jesus?  Why such a good man, a perfect man, had to die for us.  There are a lot of theological answers that can be proven by study of the Old Testament and New Testament fulfillment.  But today, today I submit that wrapped inside these other complicated reasons, is a simple one.  We needed a way to make God reachable.  That way is through the very welcoming and reachable Jesus.


Matthew 7:7-8

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 


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Blessed are the...who?

James 2

1My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. 2Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. 3If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," 4have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

How applicable is this today.  We live in a society where bigger is better and giant is best.  People are judged by the clothes they wear, the car they drive, the house they live in, etc.  We like to say that as Christians we are above this, but in all honesty most of us have experiences that tell us that is not true. 

Let me ask a couple of questions:

1)  How would folks react if someone walked into your church service with a torn pair of jeans and a messy, wrinkled t-shirt?  Would they accept them and welcome them, or would they scoot away?

2)  If the homeless shelter brought in a group of 15 men to your church service, would they be left alone or warmly greeted?

Now replace how the "church would react" with "how would you react"?  How willing are we to step out of our comfort zone, to be the first to step out and offer a hand to those who need it the most?  Remember who Jesus chose to hang out with, hint:  it wasn't the Israeli Donald Trumps.

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