GOD IS NOT YET FINISHED WITH US
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! -2 Corinthians 5:17
Author and preacher Fred Craddock, tells of being parked at the curb, waiting for his wife to finish shopping, and seeing a young woman in her late twenties sitting int he next car, dabbing at her eyes with a kleenex. AI didn=t know why she was crying,@ says Fred, Abut I had time, and I=d had a course in psychology, so I decided to figure it out: Her husband=s in a tavern around the corner. The budget won=t permit the new dress she=d picked out. She=s gotten a letter from home; her mother is ill. I went through the whole thing, when out of the barber shop in front of me came a young man, about thirty. He had in his arms a boy who looked about three, and the boy=s hair was curt short as cab be. Back in the car, the young woman grabbed the boy, kissed him all over his head, and cried and cried.@ Then, according to Fred, the woman said something to the man. He shook his head, but she kept talking. They argued. Finally, red-faced, the man got out of the car, went back inside, reached under the barber=s chair, picked up a lock of blond hair, and came back out. ANow if I=d gone up to that young woman and said, >Why are you crying? Do you want your child to stay a baby forever?@ Fred reflects, Ashe would have said, >Oh, no, no, no. But ... I=ve lost my baby.@
Put in that context, something happens to the flavor of the words when they come out of the mouth: We want some changes. Yes, most of us are for change, at least in theory. But changes are often bittersweet.
Of course, change is a part of life. In fact, you might say, it is the function of life. Without change, you do not have life. Look at a garden. What you plant in the ground, the seed, is radically different from what grows, the plant. And the plant itself goes through changes. From the moment it first breaks through the soil till you harvest the fruit, it changes as it grows. Eventually, after the harvest, it will change again, withering and dying and returning to the soil to nurture the next generation of plants.
Twyla Tharp, a choreographer , speaks of the interconnection of life and change in this way. ALife is about moving, it=s about change. And when things stop doing that they are dead. Dancing and choreography are at the heart of being alive. It=s the business of dancers and dancemakers to ask what the rules of life are, remind us that we are alive, and insist, through art, that there is a right and a wrong in culture and society. There is an overall order to life, and art wants to be in sync with it.@
What a beautiful image for life, the dance.
Dance is a very dramatic art form. It is always moving, always changing. There are very few dances, where the dancer remains motionless for any length of time.
Not only are dances full of change in themselves, by virtue of their movement, no two dances are ever the same. Even if it is the same choreography, with the same dancers involved, each time we do the dance it will be different. Because it is a dynamic thing, it is alive. And that is what it means to be alive, to the open to change, and to be in the process of changing.
The reason life is like this, is that God is like this. Our God is a God of change. There is a saying in the Far East: AGod created in the world, God dances the world.@ (There it is again, that imagery of the dance. With creation, the world, life being the dance, and God being the dancer.
This does not make God fickle. It does not suggest that the essence of God is changing toward us. God is still faithful.
God=s love is constant toward us. We can rely on God. But the way God is faithful, the way God=s love is expressed, that is constantly changing. That is what the Israelites experienced when they finally reached the promised land, the land of Canaan. For 40 years life had been pretty much the same, day in, day out, as they wandered through the wilderness. Can you imagine the same food, every meal of every day, for 40 years? Some years ago the cabbage soup diet was the Ain@ diet: nothing but cabbage soup three times a day for three to four weeks. Dianne and I tried it and it did work, we lost weight, but it was the most boring diet ever. Nothing but cabbage soup. That is what the children of Israel had experienced in the manna, the miraculous bread from heaven that fell around them every night and was there to be gathered up, enough for eating for one day. The Bible tells how they grew sick of the manna on the one hand, but on the other hand it also was direct evidence of God=s love for them as God provided for them every day.
But once they crossed the River Jordan and entered the land of Canaan, the manna ceased to fall. They no longer needed it and they no longer ate it. The began to eat of the crops produced by the new land in which they were living. They entered a new era in their lives. As they did, they experienced God providing for them in a different way.
In the wilderness they were totally dependent on God.
But that time of total dependence was ending. They were maturing and God wanted them to assume more responsibility for themselves. It was not that God no longer cared, but rather God was providing for them in a new way C through the fruit of the land which they were to help cultivate. They were growing up.
It is similar to what we experience when we are growing up as children. Remember all those wonderful toys you had as a child? Two of my favorites were a stuffed sock monkey and a red tricycle. Ever wonder what happened to all those wonderful toys? I don=t remember anyone throwing them away, but one day they were no longer there. It=s as if you just don=t need those toys any more and they are just gone. A day came for the people of Israel when they no longer needed the manna. They were maturing, their situation was changing, God was changing the way in which God cared for them.
The apostle Paul tells us the same it true for us as followers of Jesus the Christ. When we begin to make a new commitment in our lives to follow the teachings of Jesus God begins a new thing in us C a new creation.
God begins to change us: throwing out the old, bringing in the new. As God does that God is drawing us closer to God=s very self in a new relationship. That is reconciliation.
Bringing about a change, not just in the heart, which is very important, but also a change int he situation, in the environment around us, in the very relationship between God and us. No longer are we working at cross-purposes to God. As we become more and more familiar with the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus, we discover a stronger and deeper wholeness growing within us.
Our hearts are made whole again, our lives are made whole again, beginning with our relationship to God.
The great preacher Charles H. Spurgeon once said: AWhat is the use of grace which I profess to have received which leaves me exactly the same sort of person as I was before I received it? A faith that does not lead to a drastic change of behavior will never lead to a change of destiny.@
This is good news for us. We are not stuck in old habits that are dragging us down or keeping us imprisoned. We have hope in the future, because God is not yet finished with us. Thus we can dare to dream great dreams, for ourselves and for others around us, and by dreaming them begin to see them grow into reality.
On May 24, 1965, a thirteen and one-half foot boat quietly slipped out of the marina at Falmouth, Mass. It=s destination? England. It would be the smallest craft ever to make the voyage. It=s name? Tinkerbelle. It=s pilot? Robert Manry, a copy editor for the ACleveland Plain Dealer.@ He felt that ten years at the desk was enough boredom for a while, so he took a leave of absence to fulfill his secret dream. Manry was afraid, not of the ocean, but of all those people who would try to talk him out of the trip. So he didn=t share it with many, just some close relatives and, of course, his wife, Virginia. She was his greatest source of support. The trip? Anything but pleasant. He spent sleepless nights trying to cross shipping lanes without getting run down and sunk. Weeks at sea caused his food to become tasteless. Loneliness, that age-old monster of the deep, led to terrifying hallucinations. His rudder broke three times. Storms swept him overboard, and had it not been for the rope he knotted around his waist, he would never have been able to pull himself back on board.
Finally, after 78 days alone at sea, he sailed into Falmouth, England. During those nights at the tiller, he had fantasized about what he would do once he arrived. He expected simply to check into a hotel, eat dinner alone, then the next morning see if, perhaps, the Associated Press might be interested in his story. Was he in for a surprise! Word of his approach had spread far and wide. To his amazement, 300 vessels, with horns blasting, escorted Tinkerbelle into port. Forty thousand people stood screaming and cheering him to shore. Robert Manry, copy editor turned dreamer, became an overnight hero. His story has been told around the world. But Robert couldn=t have done it alone. Standing on the dock was an even greater hero: Virginia. Refusing to be rigid when Robert=s dream was taking shape, she allowed him freedom to pursue his dream.
The church cannot become great without dreamers who are weary of only maintaining the statu quo year in, year out.
We need more Roberts who have the creativity and tenacity to break with boredom and try the unusual. But even more, we need the Virginias who won=t allow rigidity to rule the roost.