Have you ever had a good idea? Well, of course you have, but I mean a really good idea. An idea that excites you. An idea that gets you all fired up. An idea that you think is really important
and is really going to make a difference.
An idea so good you just cannot wait to tell somebody about it.
And so you do. And
the person you tell it to says, “Oh, I don’t know”. And they tell you it’ll never work, people
won’t like it, somebody tried it once and it did not work, and we don’t have
the time, and we don’t have the money, and on and on and on about how this idea
that you were so fired up about cannot possibly work.
Now, I’m not saying that people should not be honest, and
I’m not saying that people should ignore the flaws in our ideas. But still, when we come in all excited about
something and all people can do is come up with reasons why it won’t work, it’s
discouraging, right? It can make us give
up on the whole idea before we even start.
Not only that, it can keep us from telling people any other ideas we
get, or even keep us from trying to think of ideas in the first place, because
we figure no one will want to go along with our next idea, either.
And that brings us to our paradoxical commandment for the
day. This is the sixth in a series we’ve
been doing based on The Paradoxical Commandments, ten statements written by Dr.
Kent M. Keith and endorsed by Mother Teresa.
The whole list is in the back of the church and it was also in the
newsletter. This week’s commandment
is: “The biggest men and women with the
biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest
minds. Think big anyway.”
In our reading for today, God had a big idea. God was going to give the people of Israel
the land of Canaan, what’s sometimes known as The Promised Land. Now, there are already people living there,
so the people of Israel are going to have to take the land by force. So God tells Moses to send some people into
Canaan to check things out, so they know the lay of the land and so they know
what they’re going to be up against.
So the spies go into Canaan. And they come back. And one of them, Caleb, says yeah, we can do
this. Let’s go. God said to do it, we can take these people,
so let’s do it.
And all the others say no, no, no. We cannot do that. It’ll never work. The people there are too powerful. Their cities are too big and too well
protected. Besides, did you see the
people there? They’re huge! We must look like little grasshoppers to
them. And besides, the land is not that
great anyway. It “devours those living
in it”. We cannot go into Canaan. The Promised Land’ll just have to wait. We’d better just stay right here.
Caleb was frustrated. Moses was frustrated. God was frustrated, too. And you can see why. Here God had this great idea. God wants to give these people a wonderful
land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and God tells them to just go in and
he’ll be with them and they’ll be able to take it, and all the people can do is
come up with all kinds of reasons why God’s idea won’t work and why they should
not even try.
In fact, “frustrated” really does not fully tell how God
felt. If we’d read on, in Chapter
fourteen, we’d have seen that God threatened to wipe them out. Moses pleaded on behalf of the people, and
God forgave them. But God said there
would be consequences. None of those
people who did not trust God would go into the Promised Land. Caleb would, but none of the others. In fact, the people who had raised all these
objections were struck by a plague and were killed.
Now, does this mean that we should automatically jump on
every new idea, no matter what? Of
course not. There are times when we can
get too excited about a new idea, when we need to have somebody slow us down,
when we need to have people make sure we’ve thought of all the potential
hazards and pitfalls and so forth. God
created skeptics, too, and sometimes they’re valuable to have around.
But here’s the thing.
Any big idea has risks. Any idea
that will really make a difference has some possible pitfalls. It’s good to recognize them and make sure we
go into a situation with our eyes open.
That’s why God told Moses to send people into Canaan to check things
out. God did not want the people of
Israel to just charge in without knowing what they were doing. God wanted them to make sure they knew what
the risks were
But the reason God wanted them to know that was so they’d
be prepared. It was not so they’d give
up and quit. Because God knows, and we
know, too, that the easiest thing in the world is to come up with a reason why
a new idea won’t work. In fact, there
are usually lots of reasons why it won’t work.
And the people of Israel thought of a lot of them. The people are too big. There are too many of them. They’re too strong. The land is not that good anyway. Any time someone has an idea of consequence,
an idea that can really change things, there are always twenty-five reasons why
it won’t work.
But there are also reasons it will work. That’s what Caleb was trying to tell the
people. It’s a good land. It’s worth taking a chance for. God’s on our side. God wants us to do this. God will help us do it. Let’s take a chance and trust God.
Most of the greatest ideas in the world have come from
people who constantly heard why their ideas would not work. From the electric light to the airplane to
the computer, there were all kinds of people who said that was never going to
work.
And that’s true in Christianity, too. I mean, can you imagine God explaining his
plan for the salvation of humanity to the angels? I don’t know that this actually happened, but
think about it. God gathers all the angels
together and says, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to send the divine Son of God down
to earth. But he’s not going to go all
around the world or anything, he’s just going to stay in this one little area
around Galilee. And he’s going to have a
few people to help him, but just a few, only twelve. And they’re going to hang around Jesus and
stay in that little area with him. And
Jesus’ll talk to some people and heal a few of them. But he’s going to break some rules, and the
religious leaders’ll get mad at him, so they’ll kill him. But by dying, he’ll conquer death and give
all of humanity the chance to be saved. That’s my plan. What do you think?”
Can you imagine the reaction of the angels? “You’re going to do what? That’ll never work. You need to send the Son all over the world, not
just to that one little spot. And he
needs a bunch of people, he needs thousands of followers to help him. In fact, you know what you should do is wait
until television and computers and stuff are invented, so Jesus can spread the
message a lot faster. And he better not
get the religious leaders mad at him—those are his most likely allies. And for heaven’s sake—if you’ll pardon the
expression—don’t let him get killed.
Who’s going to believe in somebody’s the Son of God if he gets killed?
God had a big idea for Israel. The people of Israel did not think it made
much sense. They saw all kinds of
reasons why it would not work. But God
went ahead and did it anyway. And,
eventually, once people were able to trust God enough to use God’s idea, it did
work. The people of Israel eventually
did go to the Promised Land of Canaan.
God had a big
idea for us. If God had asked our
opinion about that idea, we probably we would’ve said it did not make much
sense. We would’ve seen all kinds of
reasons why it would not work. But God
went ahead and did it anyway. And, if
we’re able to trust God enough to use God’s idea, it works. Jesus did conquer death. If we’re able to have faith in Jesus Christ
as our savior, we will be saved. It all
works.
God thinks big
for us. Let’s think big for God. There will always be reasons not to. There will always be risks. But let’s think big anyway. Let’s trust God. Because there is no idea that’s too big for
God.
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