Tonight we watched the 1975 classic movie, “Oh God”, starring John Denver and George Burns. As I sat here with my wife viewing this wonderful story I was reminded how Scotian the movie actually is. God breaks into the human story to let us know that he loves us and that he wants us to love one another. We need a strong dose of that here in the United States where God has become for many a legalistic founder of a church. God and religion are assumed to go hand in hand. The movie makes an effort to dispel that notion. In the movie God deliberately picks a fellow who is not a church goer. It seems at times to me that it is the most devout church members who don’t get the Gospel message. Where is God moving in our world today and what must I do to align myself with this power? It’s a familiar thought for me and one that I am never fully able to answer. I hope to keep myself open to his voice.
If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.–Psalm 95
One of he great mysteries of God is that he moves continually in the world in small ways and in small places. We do not need to ask ourselves where God is moving in the world today, but rather where He is moving in our village, neighborhood and street. He is acting somewhere amongst our friends and family, in eternally important ways, even if these ways do not seem to us to have any relationship to world historical events. After all, what was Galilee in the first century BC? It was nowhere.
The faith that moves mountains will always look very small and unimportant to the world. Because Love is never for itself.