Sunday, February 11, 2007

Liberating Burden

Luke 5:1-11,
Delivered graciously by Trasie Topple for Chester because he lost his voice; On the occasion of the installation of 5 officers.


Does it come in the form of a quiet still voice, while your sitting reading by the fire? What about a loud thunder clap as lightning strikes while out on a secluded lake…you knew you should have checked that weather report, right Cat?. Maybe it comes instantly like a flash of light, blinding and disorienting, or maybe it comes through a course of a long gradual line of events. It can come in the form of a handshake, an embrace and a friendly conversation. It can come on a cool winters day out playing in the snow, or eating a nice hot bowl of butternut squash soup in good company. Some have said it was on a significant journey in a foreign, uncomfortable place. Others, in the mysterious wonder of lingering sunsets from clear mountain vistas. For Chester, it was in part a prayer and blade of grass pressed between his thumbs that, when he blew on it, made marvelously loud and obnoxious noise. He was seven years old at the time.

Regardless of how, it happens. Yes, it happens, it happens in as uniquely varied forms for each one of us here, as we are uniquely, wonderfully and varyingly Created.

Yes it happens, for somehow all of us have ended up here in this place at this point in time, be it out of curiosity, desire, or because your mom made you this morning, or she made you many years ago. We gather here while a world full of busyness and stillness, strife and peace, goes on all around us. We have come here to worship the One who calls us into being for a particular purpose, even here, even now.

Personally, when I think about God’s call in my life, I’m glad it was not like Isaiah’s. So Loud and frightening! Six winged creatures, whose name literally means burning things flying around like bats, and a loud shouting voice and a hand with hot coal comes down and scalds his unclean lips. AHH! Woe is me, Isaiah says. Woe is me, is right!