A while ago I came across the following collection of advertisements taken from real newspapers.
Snow blower for sale…Only used on
snowy days.
Wire mesh butchering gloves for sale…
1 5-finger, 1 3-finger, pair: $15
Nordic track $300…hardly used, call Chubby
Georgia peaches California grown…
89 cents lb.
Joining nudist colony! Must sell washer & dryer $300.
Open House: Body Shapers Fitness Club and Toning Salon–free coffee & donuts.
Nice parachute: never opened–used once.
Sometimes I really don’t know what to make of the world we live in.
Some things simply make me smile and shake my head, others make me shake my head and shed a tear. Sometimes I feel like that person with the nice parachute: never opened – used once. Things don’t always make sense to me.
And then again…
It doesn’t make much sense to me that the Son of God would come to earth, be rejected by the religious people of the time, be condemned to die and hung on a cross with common criminals. It doesn’t make much sense that the Son of God would die for and because of the sins of the world, my sins… It doesn’t make sense.
And yet it was all because of God’s great love for us, for you, for me. And sometimes love doesn’t make much sense…
But I guess that is where faith comes in. That is what faith is all about. At times it doesn’t make much sense.
But, maybe, just maybe, as the word seems to get crazier, as life gets more difficult, as relationships seem more challenging…
Maybe that is simply an opportunity to live in faith.
For when nothing else makes any sense – maybe that’s what faith makes sense.
Poet, singer, songwriter Michael Card puts it this way
“To hear with my heart, To see with my soul,
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold
To trust in a way that I cannot see…
That’s what faith must be.”
So maybe I can live without that parachute after all…
What about you?
Rev. Geoff Howard, Knox Presbyterian Church, Iroquois
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