Homegrown Depot Blog

 

It is my birthday. 

I have always considered birthdays as a “Fool’s Gold,” celebration. I mean, seriously, how much celebration do I deserve for my mother doing something everyone else’s mom did. It may even seem that we are celebrating the wrong person. After all, my birth was all God’s plan, His process, and my parents' compliance. 

Don’t think me to be some kind of “Birthday Scrooge." I’m not. I love the attention and, when it is someone else’s special day, to highlight them! This is when I realized the day actually is about the people who have benefitted from the relationship with the “birthday boy/girl!”

I also realize at this point I have used my blog post’s quota of quotation marks. 

These occasions are expressions of relational joy. They also signal the next season of unknown circumstances. I wonder how many of us may have skipped the party if we were aware of the upcoming road. 

Dawn and I have enjoyed reading a book by Jim Collins. It is titled, What to make of a life. He has invested ten years of research into tandem people who have shared much of their stories. In each of the pairs lives, at a seeming peek, they find themselves at a cliff. At the base of each of these life altering events, sickness, loved one’s passing, job terminations, aging out, or a shift in the future’s landscape, there is a fog. Everyone of these highly successful people took small deliberate steps until they found a next passion, strength or calling. 

If you are walking through a personal fog these days, welcome to your Red Sea. All the Israelites knew is that they were chased by a mortal foe, heading into the unknown and currently were concentrating on taking as many steps as they could without worrying the walls of water would collapse on them.

I have been preaching this sermon around for the past few months. If you have already heard it, read on. Sermons, at least my sermons have a way of morphing into something different and new with time. They should be given the living aspect of God’s Word, the constant movement of our lives and the events which shape our days. Here is what I’ve been learning.

We all want to story of the Red Sea miracle, but I have almost never met the person who loves the Egyptians coming from behind or the promise of the wilderness on the path ahead. The greatness of the story is found in the danger and threat associated with the journey and the desperate desire to be done with the challenge. A great portion of God’s salvation’s meaning comes from the hopeless condition of humanity to save itself. The Red Sea is only the vehicle of moving the Hebrews from one adversary to another. The escape from Egypt was never intended to be heaven. It was, however, the path toward the promised land. 

These past months Dawn and I have been on the road visiting people who are friends and fellow hopeful survivors. We have been sharing with these people about the path God has chosen for us in the Bold Campaign. It has given us an excuse to catch up on friend’s lives and share the miraculous God-responses to hurdles for students in rural America. Each step has been miraculous and full of knowing exchanges from people who have a hope in what God is doing.  

You can imagine there are plenty of people who would rather talk about the impossibilities of stacking water-walls as an escape plan. In the end, however, The fear of waiting for the onslaught of an enemy, is a pretty compelling motivator. 

When the crowd began to surge forward into the liquid canyon, most joined. 

The analysis of a great miracle is this, God communicates His desire to accomplish something outside the realm of reasonable expectations. Someone believes God will do the improbable and then He does.

I’d imagine the Israelites all shared collective, knowing looks when they stepped on the opposite shore. It is a look which demonstrates two things. 

1. We dodged a near death experience here.

2. God really did it.

This is the power of AA meetings, cancer support groups and people who have crossed a railroad track seconds ahead of an unseen train. It is the knowing exchange of believers. It should be the way we get each other as we enter our prospective places of worship. It is the full expression of grace-acknowledgement. Don’t you wish there was a bit more of this and a bit less of looking at watches and to-do lists on the back of bulletins.

I desire to see a miraculous God, which frankly means I should stop looking for security and safety. I recently watched an interview between Bill Mahrer and Charlie Kirk. Politics aside, no one was arguing that an eternal God who created all in order to bring Himself honor was a reasonable stance. Mahrer, an avowed atheist, claimed that we just can never have answers to the big questions. In response Kirk asked a soul puncturing question. 

“But Bill, do you hope that you are wrong?”

Mahrer couldn’t answer. 

It has dawned on me, birthday celebrations are hope wrapped up with cake and candles. This year isn’t a festivity concerning me. It is an event to communally share in the chance that God will do something spectacular. 

If you had stayed on the beach, assuming the Egyptians had not slaughtered you in the sand, you would have exchanged glances with other stayers. The looks would say, “We should hav gone with them.”

For my 66th birthday, I am going to start walking. I want to look into the eyes of friends on the other side and think, “God really did it.”

We are at somewhere around 46% towards an improbable God moment of provision. Dawn and I are taking a few more steps into the chasm. He is doing it. God is really doing it.