Skip to main content

What Planet Did You Come From?

Pulling into the parking spot at our favorite Chinese restaurant, we were taken aback by our son's sudden incredulous exclamation. We had been there many times. It was all so familiar to us. But our young son who was becoming an excellent reader had noticed the signs for the first time. There in front of our parked car was a sign that read, "Parking for Human Customers Only."

Well, at least that's what he thought it said. Neighboring businesses were conscious of the limited parking available and had taken steps to ensure that their own customers were not inconvenienced by someone else's. Hunan looked an awful lot like human to a speed-reading 1st grader.

Personally I've wondered at times if there are any normal people out there. Wouldn't it be nice if our church parking lot was filled with cars delivering perfect families to our front doors every Sunday. Maybe we should reserve our parking spaces for regular, ordinary, normal people only. Wouldn't life be so much easier for Pastor's and church leaders. Finding qualified staff members and volunteers who can get along with people and don't carry loads of excess baggage, would be so much easier. There would be waiting lists for jobs like mowing the lawn, cleaning the church and teaching a Sunday School class. The little conversations with God that we sometimes have before we answer the phone would end. You know, the ones where we say, "Oh Lord, what now?".

Herein lies the problem. We're all human customers! That's why we need God. Job once complained that the people in his own house "look upon me as an alien" (19:15). Perhaps we are the strangest of all God's creatures, yet we are the only ones he died for.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Was the Eunuch's Experience that Unique?

Think about the life this man had lived. Although a measure of success had come his way, it was not without costs. Something had caused him to become disillusioned with the religion(s) of his homeland. It is unlikely that he had chosen the life of a eunuch. He may have been picked from among slaves to serve in the palace and forced to undergo the cruel procedure. Eunuchs, however, were not always the victims of some cruel monarchs desire to protect his harem from harm. In many cultures parents mutilated their own children in hopes that they would someday be chosen to serve in the temple of their favorite god. If the young man didn’t end up with a job at the temple, a position in the palace wouldn’t be all that bad either, they may have reasoned. However it happened, there is a strong possibility that he was denied a voice in the decision. Think of the anger that must have boiled beneath the surface of his prim and proper palace etiquette. If in fact his parents had done this to h...

Action!

Reading the story of Jesus can be almost breathtaking. It is shocking. Like the disciples watching Jesus ascend upon a cloud, we are left staring upward with slack jaws. God among us! It's almost to much to believe. In his introduction to the book of Acts for The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson points out an inherent danger. The possibility that we will be "...impressed - but only impressed." We run the risk of just becoming fans of Jesus. Peterson suggests, "we could easily becom enthusiastic spectators, and then let it go at that -- become admirers of Jesus, genourous with our oohs and ahs..." Mathew, Mark and John left of telling the story after the ascension of Jesus. But, Luke doesn't stop. Luke set out to make sure we didn't just become Jesus fans . Jesus continued to function and fulfil his mission through disciples in the next generation. And he continued in thier children and in thier children's children. In every generation since there have ...