But the Lord!

“Do you know anyone like that?”  Me.  “Do you know anyone like that?” Me.  “Do you know anyone like that?”  Me.  As Darrell asked this same question throughout his sermon, my answer remained the same.  Me….guilty.  This especially rang true when he spoke of Abraham “helping” God out in his journey of faith.  “Abraham was engineering God’s call.”  Oh, how I have done this!  I look at what appears to be reality and what seems to be practical, and I make my decisions.  I am what you would call….a planner.  I am constantly looking ahead, planning things out, taking in all the foreseen, and trying to predict the unforeseen factors so I can make a logical, calculated, and responsible decision, so if anyone questions what I have done, I will be prepared with sound logic and reason behind my choices.  Hello?  Hello?  (Picture Owen Wilson clawing the air in Zoolander).  Reality?  I fail, time and again, to take into the consideration the biggest reality of all…GOD!  I am being realistic when I call on the name of the Lord.  “We are truly realistic only when we take into account the implications of the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming again of Jesus Christ.”

“But the Lord…”  Oh sweet relief!  The living God regularly intervenes on behalf of His people.  I can’t tell you how reassuring it was to hear this.  When Darrell (and the Bible) asks, “Can anything happen today that can thwart God’s purpose in your life?”  I know the answer is “no,” but I can’t help but feel, at times, that I have blown a chance, missed an opportunity, ignored a window of time to act, failed to branch out on a new path and thought, “Well, that’s that! I’ve missed it!” I feel that I may have blocked a chance God was giving me, and wondered if I have thwarted God’s plan and doubted that chance ever come around again.  From my viewpoint I ask, “How could it? There’s no way this could come around again.”  But the Lord?...But the Lord.

After his series of blunders, Abraham returns to the altar he built for God. Darrell describes this space and place as, “Where he had first met God…where God had first made sense to him….He threw himself on God to forgive and renew.”  I couldn’t help but be so grateful that Sonshine provides that touchstone for campers on Wednesday and Thursday nights for students to come and renew their faith.  They can return to the altar where they first met God, when He first made sense to them.  What a gift of space and time Sonshine provides for an amazing renewal to take place.