Today is the day before the day that is the reason I moved my family 15+ hours away from St. Louis. On Sunday, February 13, the church I work for will launch. That means that we have: sent out over 16,000 sealed invitations, bought two weeks of radio ads on two different stations, had a website created for us (christredeemer.net), put our 'Opening Days' information on the local break-in to the WEATHER CHANNEL, put up 10 4x8 vinyl banners around the community, purchased and setup a great sound and video system, painted, installed shelves, mopped, arranged chairs, planned music, planned children's church, planned verbal transitions for our liturgy, installed quarter round, fought with a new answering machine, trained a new sound tech, put together 75 songbooks, created slides of song lyrics for the projector, printed and folded bulletins and informational brochures, created signs for the bathrooms and nursery, and a whole host of other things that escape my memory.
I've also prayed about our launch in inverse proportions to the amount of time I have spent doing 'stuff' for the launch. I'm not sure if this makes me a hypocrite, becuase I don't pretend that I have prayed as much as a I could have, but it sure makes me a man of little prayer.
Indeed, I have struggled through this process, knowing that the people of God have met in sundry and hostile conditions throughout history, and that the Triune God of the Scriptures has always been faithful to sustain the Bride. So, in the end, I understand that God is the One who truly draws and calls His people--The Good Shepherd tends His sheep well.
The thing that's not always so clear is the human responsibility part of the equation. We have a God who did not need to create, and yet He made humans. We have a God who could write the Gospel in the sky for all to see (even in their own regional dialect!!!!!!), and yet has set up a system whereby He uses man in the proclamation of reconciliation. We have a Holy Spirit who works in conjunction with the Bible, and yet if I as a preacher refuse to actually preach the Bible, then I'm not so sure that the Spirit would work--altough God retains the crown rights over His creation to operate any way He chooses.
Peter in the same breath tells his hearers that Jesus was crucified by the decree of God, and yet blames the sinful men in the process.
Does the color of the chairs in our worship space make a difference? If our bathroom stall doors don't have locks yet, does it matter? When has the Gospel been so adapted that it loses it's power? Can it lose it's power? Are the Authorized Version translators correct when they state that 'even the meanest of translations' is still the very Word of God?
I don't know where the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man intersect--I won't ever. Did God plan for Paul to do all the work that he did for the infant church? Yes. Could Paul have hindered that in some strange way had he decided to shirk all his responsibilities and go off to some land and enroll in their witness protection program? I'm not so sure.
Should I even use my time entertaining these questions?
Have I rambled long enough?
One this is for sure: God has been very gracious to us and has shown us His ways (at least
some of them, i.e. we don't have a detailed list of the elect), and we would do well to follow them.
I can't get all the math to work out in all my theological equations--how exactly is God going to raise the body of someone who has been cremated and scattered from an airplane about Yosemite?
But the thing is, some things God can handle without my intellect being satisfied.
Wow, I didn't think I would wind up at this point today.
I should keep my streams of consciousness to myself.
Pax to all.
Chris.
