Hello,
I don’t know if last week’s news of the run away blimp reached your news station, but since it happened over us in Pennsylvania, it was the news de jour one day last week.
For reasons still unknown a 250 foot long blimp that was stationed in northern Maryland broke away from its moorings. Turns out that this particular blimp is a very sophisticated military surveillance device whose job was to keep its eye out for threats to Washington D.C. Last week it was doing its job at 6000 feet when it tether broke, and off it went on a run away journey. Since it is an unmanned blimp with no motors or steering there was no controlling its path or destination.
When its tether severed, air force jets were immediately launched to track it down. There was some concern that it might wander over a populated area and descend upon it, but the bigger concern was that this blimp had “sensitive instruments and data” that the military didn’t want to get into the hands of those who shouldn’t have it. Not only did this blimp cost nearly $200,000,000.00 (yes….it was no simple hot air balloon), but because of its payload it was extreme value. And yet, somehow the tether that held this blimp to the earth somehow broke.
Sometimes I find myself joining the Psalmist as I look at the star sprinkled sky, “What are mortals that you should be mindful of them?” In the vast domain of the universe, it really is quite unreasonable that God almighty would even remotely be concerned about the likes of me. If I, like that multimillion dollar blimp, were to set off on a run away journey from God, would God even notice?
And yet what seems logical and reasonable to me as I scope the universe, is not the way that God thinks about me and values me. God, for reasons that are beyond my understanding, thinks of me so dearly that God has tethered me to his very self by taking hold of me with divine power and might. Jesus, God incarnate, staked himself in my life in the waters of Baptism, and when that happened, God gave me God’s name, a name that is worth far more than sensitive instruments and data held in a surveillance blimp, for to give me his name, it cost the life of his Son.
And even more than that, when God tethered me to himself, he said this, “I will never let you go.” Romans 8 says it this way, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Wow!
Who knows why the tether of that multi-million dollar blimp broke…a fierce wind? a weakening from daily stress? an enemy’s cutter? a flaw in its make-up?…but this I know, the tether with which God holds me will not likewise fail. No matter what I do….no matter what happens to me….no matter how rebellious the storm that I create or is created around me….God has taken hold of me with the same power with which he created the universe and holds it together.
So, as I look at the vastness of that star sprinkled sky and hear that God has taken hold of my life with an unyielding grip….well, I guess that it must be true …so true that I can live each day in trust of that truth….the truth that nothing will ever be able to separate me from him….likewise the same for you!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace,
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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