The Bungee Cord 6-13-22

Hello,

A long time ago, someone took out a piece of parchment, grabbed a pen and ink, and wrote these words,

3 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?” Psalm 8

They are ancient words, but they are words that I find forming in my brain when I look up into the skies on one of those crystal clear nights and the heavens look like a two year old’s glitter work of art. Stars hanging in our galaxy that I can see, and countless more in galaxies beyond my sight. It is an incredible wonder that the One who abides over it all would have even a passing thought about me, a subatomic speck in the universe. So unthinkable this seems to some, that they rule out such a hope as the hope of a fool and a dreamer.

Yet, that is the wonder of the Christian faith, that indeed the one whose mind, heart and hands are wrapped around the universe keeps his mind, heart and hands wrapped around you and me. It’s a faith and trust that is not born out of wishful thinking or mortal fears, but it is born out of a Good Friday cross and an Easter morning tomb. We take to heart the witness that has been passed down through the centuries that in a person who died on a Friday and who rose back to a new life on Sunday, God was at work demonstrating God’s care and mindfulness of the specks of God’s creation that carry God’s image.

From the very beginning there were those who scoffed at those who told and believed this story, saying that it didn’t happen. And why were they and are they so certain that it didn’t happen? Well, because they were certain and are certain that it couldn’t have happened. If the grave was empty, certainly someone stole the body. Dead is dead. The grave is the grave.

Christians agree with those who deny the Good Friday/Easter story that dead is dead, and the grave is the grave. As a matter of fact, every year on Ash Wednesday, Christians are marked on their forehead with a cross of ashes and these words are said, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Ashes placed on our foreheads so that every time we look in the mirror we come face to face with the truth; our hands and fingers simply have no power to rival the grip and claim of death on us.

But there is another truth that those ashes speak to us, and that is that it is not the power of our fingers and hands upon which we place our hopes, but our hopes to break the shackles that death has wrapped around us comes from the one who with the power that created the universe and breathed life into it has shattered those shackles. A look to the heavens might raise of the awareness of how small I might be, but just as surely that look up raises in me the awareness of how powerful God is. Powerful enough to do more than my mind can imagine, including raising a man from the dead to live a new life….and raising me up to a new life, too.

Take a look at the heavens. Take a look at the cross. And be full of hope and wonder.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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