Rambling for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet 16 October

 

Living here, you’ve all probably seen signs like this around Mission Beach and Etty Bay. I’ve driven the Tully-Mission Beach road many times, and always say to myself, “Yeah, yeah, no cassowaries here”. Because I didn’t see any (we did catch the obligatory big birds on Etty Bay beach). So it was with the usual cynicism that I drove the long way round through Bingil Bay to Mission Beach and back to the Feluga Pub (another story for another day) on Tuesday. But wait! Why is the school bus driver flashing his lights at me? And what’s that on the way to the boat ramp? And why has the car in front of me slowed down and moved out to the right? Yes, three of them in a ten minute period!

Throughout history, people have been cynical about God’s promises, because they haven’t seen them fulfilled in their own lives. Of course, sometimes they don’t recognise what God has been up to in their lives. I write “people” and “they” and “history”, but I might just as well write “me” and “now”. The OT prophets foretold how God would intervene in history in Christ, but 1stC folk didn’t get it. St Paul says that Jesus will “reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1) and we still fear that our loved ones are unsaved, because we haven’t seen what God is up to in their hearts. Like the scoffers in 2 Peter 3, we say ““Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

If that’s you – it is too often me – here’s St Peter again:

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise …”