Genesis 11:27-12:5
October 2, 2011
Now these are the descendants of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran was the father of Lot. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran.
Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.
Back in December of 1946, a businessman named Stuart Luhan checked into the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Luhan regularly made trips there, and his custom was to get a room on the 10th floor so that he could be away from the street noises. Settling in for the night he looked forward to a good night’s rest before doing business the next day. So off he went to sleep.
Sometime in the early morning hours he woke up and saw a red glow out the window. Something was wrong. He heard a commotion outside his door and opened it to find the hallway thick with black smoke. Shutting the door he began to panic. He opened the window to see if there was a way down, but looking down from ten stories only increased his panic. What should he do? He couldn’t go into the hallway, and he couldn’t jump. Not knowing what else to do he retreated to the center of his room and tried to practice something he had been doing every morning for years, which is to calm himself and pray.
Seeking God’s help he said, “God, I put myself into your care and keeping. Let your presence be my fortress. I await your instructions on how to get out of this crisis.” He felt calm, despite the fact that the other voices in the hotel were becoming more frantic. Soon, he sensed a voice, a presence, telling him to calmly get dressed. Then he was to make a rope out of the sheets, blanket, and bedspread. He was getting ready to tie it to the center post on the window and throw the rope down, but from the same presence he sensed, “No. Not yet. Trust me.” He waited. Panic clutched at him, trying to get him to give in, but he stayed calm. After what seemed like forever he sensed the voice saying, “Now! Put the rope out the window and climb out.” As he did, Luhan recited words from the psalms: “God is my life and my salvation. I shall not fear. God is my life and salvation. I shall not fear.”
Climbing down he only reached the eighth floor. There was nowhere to go. Then he saw a fireman extending his ladder to the eighth floor, but it was too far away. Climbing up the ladder, the fireman saw Luhan, signaled him, and swung a rope hanging from the window above. He swung it once, and Luhan missed. Again he swung it, but it was just out of his reach. Finally a third time he swung it, and Luhan caught it. Twisting it around his right hand, he let go of his homemade rope and swung to the fireman, who caught him. Looking back he noticed that his homemade rope had caught fire and was now falling toward the earth. Luhan realized that if he had gone out too soon, he would have hung there to the point at which he couldn’t hold on any longer. He would have died. If he had waited, his own rope would have burned, causing him to fall and die. The timing was absolutely perfect.
How do you explain something like this? For a skeptic the answer is that there was no involvement by God. What Luhan experienced was just some inner working of the brain guiding him out of a fire. So, do you think Luhan was just ignorant in thinking that God was helping him, or are skeptics arrogant in thinking no God exists to have helped him?
One of the foundational problems of all humans, not only skeptics, is to think that at our present time in history we know all there is to know. Humans have done this in every day and age. We suffer from an arrogance of sophistication. At any age we think we’re so sophisticated, and that people of the past were so ignorant. The Medieval church suffered from arrogance of sophistication when it came how they treated people like Copernicus and Galileo. Those two recognized that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun. But the Church believed that it’s theological views held all the answers. The early church was often arrogant in its ignorance
This same kind of arrogance was present in the development of Communism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all the rest were so sure that they understood human nature, and that both religion and Capitalism were remnants of flawed, past thinking. And in their ignorance they created a system that oppressed creativity, ingenuity, and life. Whether we’re talking about the Industrial Revolution, flat earthers, or African colonialism, the people of those ages were convinced that they knew what there was to know, and that made them right. We humans don't like not knowing, and so we're really good at assuming that our present explanations are THE explanations.
The fact is that there are things that happen in life that can't be explained fully either by people of science or by people of faith. We’ve had some great examples of this here at Calvin Church. Many of you picked up copies of our “Calvin Stories” that we made available last year during Lent. These are stories of God experiences that people of our church have had. Let me share one of those stories with you by Bill Frank. Those of you who know Bill know that he’s not one given to flights of fancy. He’s president of Busch International, and an engineer by training and temperament. He headed up our building expansion program, and his calmness, insightfulness, and level-headedness made it an incredible success.
When Bill’s two boys, Wendell and Garrett, were 8 and 9, he took them hiking with his friend (also named Bill) and Bill’s son Robby. They planned to go to McConnell’s Mill State Park, but then decided to go further upstream to Kennedy Mill. Kennedy Mill is a beautiful, secluded spot on private property bordering the Slippery Rock Creek a mile or so further upstream. There was a swimming hole that Bill hoped to take them all to, one he had gone to as a kid.
The walk was further than he had remembered and the boys were getting tired and bored. When they finally reached the swimming hole, it was less protected from the fast moving water than he had remembered. The water was deep and the rapids too close. He had to say no to swimming. The boys all whined, but Bill had to make the smart call that a responsible dad should make.
He knew that they were disappointed, so he kept an eye out for a fun, but safer, place where they could swim. He saw a neat looking spot where water shot over a flat rock and dropped into a little whirlpool. He told his boys to wait on the bank with Bill and Robby while he jumped in and checked it out. He stood on a submerged rock just off shore and told them to jump in. Both boys jumped in. Soon it became apparent that the water was faster than expected. Bill slipped on the moss-covered rock, and the three of them fell back into the water just outside of the rocks that protected the little whirlpool from the main current. Bill couldn’t touch bottom, and told the boys to swim for the rocks and shore. There was a strong eddy current, and no matter how hard they swam, they couldn’t make any forward progress. He tried to push one with each hand, but couldn’t swim hard enough without using his arms.
Bill’s friend Bill jumped in and swam to the boys. He was closest to Wendell and each man pushed a kid and swam hard, but they could make no progress against the strong current. They tried over and over. Bill’s heart was racing. Bill’s friend went under twice as Wendell grabbed him for help. Suddenly everyone was in a struggle for life or death. Bill’s friend went under twice more and had to push away from Wendell. He yelled, choking, that he was drowning and began to swim desperately for shore.
Bill knew that we were in serious trouble. He thought about his wife, Karen, and how terrible it would be to tell her the kids were dead, and it was his fault. He looked to the sky and said a prayer. He screamed for the boys to swim for shore. They heard the seriousness in his voice. Somehow they summoned more energy and swam hard, but again made no headway against the current. Then it happened.
He didn’t see God’s physical hand, but he clearly saw the impression that it made in the water and against the boys’ backs. Their shoulders bent forward with his push. The water broke in front of them in a gentle “V,” like you would see in front of a canoe under power. Their flailing strokes suddenly became effective and they both moved steadily together toward shore. He watched as their hands sunk into the soft mud. Then he swam.
As they crawled together up the mud bank, all were in a state of shock. They had been in the water maybe a few minutes, but everything had changed. Bill had seen God’s hand.
A skeptic might say that Bill just helped the kids to summon the strength to swim harder. Those of us with faith know that sometimes things happen beyond our understanding.
Marie Campbell, another member of our church, also had a hard-to-explain story. She was living outside of Boulder, Colorado at the time, and was part of a Bible study group called the Bible Study Fellowship. One particular evening in December they had studied the story of the stoning of Stephen Acts 7:54-56.
As she drove home with her 3-year-old son along Boulder Canyon to her home in Sugarloaf Mountain, she was pondering the teaching of Stephen experiencing the presence of God as “he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” She wondered, “is there truly is a living presence of God, or is it all about rules and regulations and reading the Bible religiously?”
The road through Boulder Canyon was adjacent to Boulder Creek. It was about a 20-foot drop off the edge of the road, and in the 1970’s they did not have many sections of the road with guardrails. As she went around a curve, the sun dipped behind a mountain and the road turned into black ice. Her car was sliding toward the edge of Boulder Creek, and there was nothing she could do to change the course. She remembered the lesson of the day and decided to pray to God to “be with me” like God seemed to be with Stephen that day.
Suddenly everything went into slow motion. The car was flying off a cliff and into Boulder Creek, headed for the huge boulders below, but it was as if time slowed to a crawl. She heard in her mind a very clear and authoritative voice saying, “Let go of the steering wheel.” She inwardly chuckled at the picture of her holding tightly to a steering wheel with a car that was now in mid-air.
As she let go of the steering wheel, a huge presence and peace came upon her. It felt as if the car was now sitting on the palm of a hand that lowered it into Boulder Creek. The car came to a rest in the almost dry creek. They were alive and unharmed. Suddenly she remembered that there was a power station further up the creek, and at any moment they could release massive amounts of water into the creek.
She jumped out of the car and opened the back seat door to get her son out of his car seat. She yelled, “Get out, get out!” He later remembered it differently, as “Mean Mom made him leave my favorite stuffed animal in the car.”
The next problem was that she had on heeled boots and they were both standing 20 feet down from the road. Did anyone see her going over? How would she get up the steep bank with her son?
Looking up she saw three men peering over the edge. A Public Service truck had been behind her and had seen the whole thing. They had already gotten out ropes and where ready to help in anyway they could. The men kept saying, “I can’t believe it. That car looks like nothing happened to it after all that!” They pulled both up to safety and were able to radio for a tow truck.
Having been rescued, she began to worry about the next thing: how would she get home? At that moment her next-door neighbor, driving by, saw her and pulled over. He said, “I usually never travel down town this time of day, but today I just felt an urge to go to Boulder. And then I saw you standing there.”
The next time she went to the Bible study and told her story, a lady in the group smiled and said, “Marie, that is not the end of the story… My husband came home from work and told me how his three co-workers could not believe what had happened to them on the road up to Nederland. Her husband had heard the story through his wife and was able to tell them about Bible Study Fellowship and how they now believe in a living, active God. Those men signed up for the Bible Study Group because they wanted to learn more.”
Later, when Marie got the car from the shop, the mechanic asked who was driving it. “I was,” she said. He looked at her in a weird way and said “The front struts hit with such an impact that whoever was holding onto the steering wheel would have had two broken arms. Your arms look fine.”
What do you do with stories like these? I've grown up with feet in two realms: the realm of rationality through my background in psychology and social work, and the realm of religion and spirituality. I’ve learned to look at life both through human logic and with an appreciation for the “more than,” the beyond. I've learned over time that the biggest problem so many skeptics have—when faced with events that go beyond, with events that are "more than”—is that they don't know what to do with them because the "more than" is beyond their thinking. But we're fortunate that we have a faith that follows those who were open to the beyond, to the "more than."
We're fortunate that we follow folks like Abraham, who didn't question God's calling to go into the wilderness. He simply followed and discovered a God who goes beyond our normal, rational thinking.
So what do we say to skeptics in the face of their doubts about God interevening in life? We simply tell them that we are open to answers that go beyond our awareness, and because we don’t have to have nice, neat answers, we are free to see things that are more than humans can understand.
Amen
