“I’m just saying…”
I heard an old song on the radio today. It got me thinking. The lyrics contained a line: “Take a chance on me!”
I imagined the Trinity standing in front of a church, singing to the congregation: “Take a chance on me!”
A few years ago I became interested in the stock market. I had been hearing all my live about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and the commodity market. I knew that these were the foundation for our global economy, but I didn’t know how they worked.
After a couple of weeks of research, I decided I would purchase some stocks, mutual funds, and commodity options. I made an investment of $5,000.00 dollars. In a three month period I was able to earn a nearly 35% return on my investment. My five thousand had become almost $6,700.00. There was only one problem with this scenario. The money I used was imaginary. I never actually contacted a broker and made the investment. I preferred to play it safe. I would have much rather had the money in the bank then invested in some risky and yet profitable venture.
In a lot of ways, that’s how we approach the call of God. It sounds good. It sounds like it will be meaningful—but we don’t want to take the chance. Better to stay with the status quo. God gives us a vision of what the future can be—a vision of hope and possibility. God calls us to do something new, to do something risky, to do something creative. God tells us to let go of our security blankets—but they remain tightly clinched in our fist.
In Isaiah 55, there is a call from God to step outside our proverbial comfort zones. The CALL comes during the year 539 BCE. In this year, King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonian empire. Next he issued a decree that ended the Israelite exile. The people were free to return home. Isaiah properly identified this to be the work and blessings of God. Now God was inviting His people to take advantage of this opportunity to return to the Promised Land. There was only problem. Too many of the people seemed unwilling to move.
We understand how they must have felt, don’t we? There are times in our lives when we are confronted by new challenges and opportunities. God gives us the potential to do things different, the possibility that we might actually make a difference, but we refuse to move.
Remember the old saying, “Come wealth, come woe, my status is quo!”
Or maybe you prefer the oldest of all creeds among people of faith: “We’ve never done it that way before!”
That’s the approach many of us take to life. We want to maintain the status quo. We don’t want to do anything new. We don’t want any changes in our ways of thinking, believing, or acting.
We have a wonderful Abba (daddy, papa, father) in heaven who loves us from the core of his being to the core of our being. We have Jesus, the Son, who has taken our humanity into himself – and shared his humanity with us. We have an empowering Holy Spirit who mediates the will and life of the Divine into the comparments we call our heart and mind. The Almighty is connected to us and ready to flow through us.
Hear the blessed Trio singing to you right now: “Take A Chance On Me!”
