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Saturday, June 21, 2014

The God of the Details

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish Sunday, June 22, 2014.  The Bible verses used are Genesis 6:13--7:5.


            Last week, in the first of our sermon series on Noah, we talked about how to be able to trust someone we have to have a relationship with them.  The thing is, when it comes to having a relationship with God, that’s not always as easy as it sounds.  It’s not that we don’t want to have a relationship with God.  It’s just that, sometimes, we have a hard time believing that God wants to have a relationship with us.
            It’s not that we think God does not love us, at least not necessarily.  It’s just that, well, God is so far beyond us.  God is so big, and so mighty, and so powerful.  God is omniscient and omnipresent and all these other ten-dollar words that say that God is way beyond anything we can ever imagine.  And so, we think, why should a God that’s that big and that powerful want to have a relationship with me?
            And then, too, we think, I’m such a small part of the world, really.  I mean, there are over seven billion people on earth.  Even if God wants to, could God actually have a personal relationship with over seven billion people?  How’s that even possible?  And there’s certainly nothing special about me.  With over seven billion people in the world, why would God choose to have a relationship with me?
            Again, this is different from saying God loves us.  It’s possible to love a group of people without having a personal relationship with them.  I’ll give you a couple of examples.
            A friend of mine has made several mission trips to Haiti.  When he talks about the people of Haiti, you can hear and feel the love he has for them.  But he only has a personal relationship with a handful of them.  That’s not a criticism of him, it’s just the way it is and the way it has to be.  He loves them all, but most of them he does not and cannot have a relationship with.
            Or take the storms we had this week.  First, there was the tornado that hit Pilger, Nebraska.  My heart went out to those people, because it’s easy for me to put myself in their place.  I care about those people.  But I don’t have a personal relationship with them.  I don’t actually know any of those people.  But then, later in the week, I heard about the potential flooding in the North Sioux City/McCook Lake/Dakota Dunes area where we lived before we came here.  And then we heard about the tornado that destroyed much of Wessington Springs, where we lived for seventeen years.  And suddenly my love took on a whole different dimension.  Because I know those people.  I have a personal relationship with them.  I did not just feel bad.  I wanted to know everything that was going on there.  I wished there was some way I could help right away.
            Here’s the distinction, or at least one of them.  When we have a relationship with someone, we care about the details.  We don’t want to just know that they’re safe and well.  When we have a relationship with someone, we want to know everything that’s going on with them.  We want to know all about their life.  We want to know what they’re doing, how they’re spending their time.  We want to know if they’re happy or sad, and what made them that way.  When we have a relationship with someone, we want to know about all the details of their life.
            And that’s what we need to realize about God.  God is not just this big, mighty, powerful God who’s only interested in the big picture.  That’s part of who God is, but it’s not all God is.  God is interested in the big picture--in fact, God is in charge of the big picture--but God is interested in all the little details, too.  God is interested in the details of your life, and God is interested in the details of my life.  Because God wants to have a relationship with us, God is also a God of the details.
            And that brings us to our reading from Genesis.  Some of this is what we read last week, but we also picked up the parts we skipped.  And the parts we skipped last week are the details.
            God told Noah to build an ark, a big boat that will protect him and his family from the storm and will save all the animals, too.  But that’s not all God did not just tell Noah to build a boat and leave it at that.  God went into detail.  
God told Noah the exact dimensions the ark was supposed to be.  God gave the exact length, the exact width, and the exact height the ark was supposed to be.  And don’t be thrown off by that word “cubit”, it’s just a length of measurement.  People back then knew what it meant.  It’s just like saying feet or yards or meters or something like that.  In fact, I don’t know what the Bible translators don’t translate that into feet or yards or meters, other than just tradition.  When God said something should be so many cubits, Noah knew exactly the distance God was talking about.
But God went into a lot more detail than just that.  God told Noah to put a roof on the ark.  God told Noah to leave an opening below the roof, and God told Noah exactly how big that opening was supposed to be.  God told Noah exactly how many decks to make the ark.  God told Noah where to put the door to the ark.  Then God told Noah exactly how many pairs of each animal he was supposed to take on the ark.  And just to make sure there were no slip-ups, God specifically said each pair was supposed to be one male and one female.  And then God told Noah exactly when it was going to rain and God told Noah exactly how long it was going to rain.
Now, God would not have had to do all that.  God could’ve just said to Noah, “Make sure you build it big enough” and left Noah to figure it out.  But God did not do that.  God went into detail because God is not just the God of the big picture.  God is also the God of the details.
And because God is the God of the details, God is interested in the details of your life.  And God is interested in the details of my life.  Those details of our lives are what make us who we are.  The details, the little things, the things we do every day, are the things that make you you.  And they’re the things that make me me.
Jesus told us that God is so interested in us that God knows the number of hairs on each one of our heads.  Now that’s a detail.  That’s a detail we don’t even know about ourselves.  Do you know the number of hairs on your head?  I don’t even know how I’d go about trying to count them.  But God knows the number of hairs on each one of our heads, because God is the God of the details.
The fact that God is interested in the details of our lives means that we, you and I, can have a relationship with God.  But it means more than that.  The fact that God is interested in the details of our lives means that there is nothing we cannot talk to God about.  It’s true that nothing is too big for God, but it’s also true that nothing is too small for God.
The things that are important to us are important to God, because God has a personal relationship with us, and that’s how a relationship works.  When you have a relationship with someone, the things that are important to them are important to you and vice versa.  Think of the people you have a close relationship with, and I’ll bet you find that’s true.  For example, It’s important to Wanda that I be able to watch ballgames.  That’s not because she cares about ballgames herself, but because we have a close relationship, and so the things that are important to me are important to her.  It’s important to me that Wanda be able to do ceramics.  That’s not because I have any desire to ever do ceramics myself, but because we have a close relationship, and so the things that are important her are important to me.
            That’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with each one of us.  What that means is that no matter what’s on our minds or in our hearts, we can go to God with them.  God won’t laugh at us.  God won’t think we’re a bother.  God won’t think we’re wasting God’s time.  If it’s important to us, then it’s important to God, because we have a close relationship with God.
            In fact, in a way, going to God with the small things shows how strong our faith in God really is.  What I mean is that everyone goes to God with the big things.  Even people who are not all that religious will often pray when there’s a serious problem, when death is close or when there’s a serious illness or something like that.  But when we go to God with the small things, too, we’re showing that we want to be in a relationship with God.  Not only that, we’re showing that we believe our relationship with God is close enough that God will care about the small things, the details.  We’re showing that we’re not worried that we’ll be bothering God or wasting God’s time.  We’re showing that we trust God to care about us because of the relationship we have with God.
            God is the God of the details.  God knew exactly how big the ark needed to be.  God knows exactly the number of hairs on each of our heads.  And God knows and cares about every last detail of our lives.
            God is both the God of the big picture and the God of the details.  Because of that, we can go to God with everything, big and small.  God cares about it all, because God not only loves us, God wants to have a close relationship with us.

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