“The Gospel in Storybooks: Stone Soup” Romans 12: 4-5 Matthew 18:20

We are now in the final week of our sermon series on finding Gospel truths in storybooks. This week is another favorite book of mine, Stone Soup. Stone Soup by Marcia Brown tells the story of three soldiers who found themselves to be very tried and very hungry one day as they were walking through the woods. As they crested a hill, they saw a village and wondered if it would be a good place to eat and sleep. But the villagers saw the soldiers coming and they became fearful of them. They hid all of their food and as the soldiers went from place to place, home to home, asking if they had anything to eat they came up with creative lies all emphasizing that they didn’t have anything to offer. 

So one of the soldiers came up with an idea. He called the villagers together and told them that they were going to just have to make stone soup. They were intrigued. They had never heard of stone soup before. So a large kettle was brought, water put to boil, and three stones added to the pot. The solider started to call out ingredients that would make the soup even better, and one by one those ingredients were brought forward. 

When the soup was deemed perfect the table was set and the people feasted together, bringing even more food from their homes to go with the soup. The villagers and soldiers danced, laughed, and shared stories around the table well into the evening.

Sometimes we remember the first time that we hear a story. Other times we remember engaging it in a different way at various points in our lives. While this story was read during my elementary school years, I remember it most fondly from some of my first years pastoring. In seminary, I had been trained as a faith-based community organizer. One summer, my job was to go down to Texas and work with connecting church and the community together for the sake of serving those in need. While I was pastoring in State College, I continued my training in order to train others in these types of intentional partnerships for a week in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. There folks gathered from around the globe to figure out how to build up communities using scriptural principles to do something more amazing together then they could ever do apart. While at that training we heard again the story of Stone Soup. As a child a game we would sometimes play was “what are you bringing for the stone soup?” where you went around the circle and had to remember what each person was bringing. But here we asked a different question - what gift do you bring that helps build up your community?

The apostle Paul writes in various place in his letters about folks having different gifts for the sake of building up the body of Christ and sharing the good news. “For as in one body we have many members, not all members have the same function.” Part of being in the body of Christ is learning what our gift is and using it and part of being in the body of Christ is honoring the gifts of others.

How do we go about finding out what our gift is? There are inventories that you can fill out, online and in books, that speak to what your spiritual gift is. You can think about areas that you are passionate about - like being generous or evangelism. You can take account of the places where you are most fulfilled when serving the church - those places where you know that your gift and the need come together in a beautiful way.

Part of knowing your gift is not getting caught up in the gifts of others. At a retreat I attended, the pastor speaking says folks always want to come up to her and talk about the gift of tongues for example. And she always asks them if that is their gift. If they reply no, then she encourages them to spend more time discovering and cultivating their particular gift then being worried about the gifts that others have.

We cultivate our gifts by using them. Using them inside the church and outside. If you have the gift of mercy, wanting to care for or help others, have you considered using that gift to help with the new congregational care ministry visiting and uplifting our homebound members? If you have the gift of knowledge or teaching, connecting life to the scriptures, have you considered teaching a Bible Study class? 

Like any gift we receive, it is meant to be used, not set on a shelf for a different time in life. We are given a gift not so we can say that we have it, but so we can use it!

The other side of spiritual gifts are honoring the gifts of others. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “Individually we are members one of another.” How can we honor one another? Have you ever thanked someone for using their gift in the church? Or have you encouraged someone to discover what their spiritual gift is?

One of the best ways that we can honor the gifts a person has is to use our gifts and our gifts only. There is a tendency in churches to see a need, be it in a committee or facility or as a volunteer, and even though we know that is not our gift, we rush to fill it. We don’t like to see vacancies, so we rush in to help. The problem is when we fill in a spot where we know that it isn’t our gift, we are denying someone the opportunity who does have that gift to serve in that way. When we rush in because we are uncomfortable with letting things simply be for a while, we could be taking away the Holy Spirits opportunity to work on some folks heart and bring to their mind that this is really what they are supposed to be doing to use their particular gift.

We also need to build each other up in our gifts. I’ve shared with some folks before that when I was younger in the church I loved to sing. Then, probably around middle school, we got a praise team coordinator at the church who made an offhanded comment about me singing off key and needing to be quieter. He may have thought he was being helpful, but the way he said it actually resulted in me not singing for years in public. Part of honoring one another gift is walking the line between what needs to be done and how we want it done, and knowing the difference.

The beauty of the story of Stone Soup, is when the people came together, each offering their small gift, they made something that they could have never imagined making on their own. The annual conference’s theme for the next four years is Better Together. Do we truly believe that we are better together? Better when we find and use our gifts together? Better when we put our energies together to make something new? 

In my last parish we did this out of the box thing where five United Methodist Churches felt a calling to come together, for what they weren’t quite sure yet, but to pray for the community and figure out how they can serve better together. Here, when we came together for cluster worship we showed was it looks like to be the body of Christ together to lift up God’s name. 

The age when we can silo off in churches based off of our individuals gifts is over. The time when we can do our thing and you can do your thing and then we can try to see if it fits tougher is done. The years of each church insisting on doing their own thing without working with other churches is no more. We need each other. What we do effects one another. And we honor and glorify God best when we come together, for in the words of Jesus, “Where two or three are gathered in my name. I am with them.” Let us use our gifts to honor Christ. Amen. 

The Gospel in Storybooks: Old Turtle Ex 34: 6-7 Isaiah 40: 21-31

Old Turtle by Douglas Wood was never on my bookshelf as a child. In fact, I wasn’t introduced to it until seminary, but it quickly became one of my favorites. Old Turtle tells of a different time and place - when everything in the world - all of creation - could communicate with one another. This isn’t just like prior to the Tower of Babel in the Bible when all human could talk to one another - this was all of the stars, the sea, and the animals. Everything.

But over time the Creation started to argue with one another about what God was like. As often happens each part of creation started to assert that God was like them. The island said that God was separate and apart. The bear said God was powerful. The fish said God was a swimmer and so on and so forth. 

We are now in the fourth week of our sermon series about seeing Gospel truths in children’s storybooks. When I read Old Turtle for the first time one of the scriptures that came to mind was from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking to the Israelites when they are in captivity by Babaloyn. They have been there a long time and it looks like they are going to be there longer. The original folks who had been taken into captivity are starting to die off and new people are being born who never laid eyes on the holy city of Jerusalem. They people remember who God is by the stories they tell, but the problem is that they have been gone so long, they are starting to forget. 

In this mornings scripture lesson the prophet is trying to remind the people who God is. Have the people not known and have they not heard time after time? God is the Lord over all creation. Isaiah paints a vast picture of who God is and how God fashioned together creation. It is as if Isiah is trying to drill into the people how great and timeless God is and how insignificant the people are in comparison to that. 

Which gets to the question I think the creation was arguing about in Old Turtle - who is God in relationship to us? All to often our human words and images for God fall short. In fact, we can never fully know God in this life, and after a while, we start to make God in our image. 

I remember one of the first images I had of God - it was a smiling father with brown hair, a white dress shirt and a red tie. Why was this the image I had in my head? Because of the storybooks in Sunday School had the picture of a young family walking into church and this picture up in the right hand corner. What I didn’t understand at the time was that this was a memory of the child walking into the church of getting ready for church. My little mind couldn’t grasp that, so this picture became my image of God.

What was one of your first images of God? And how has that image remained the same or changed? The problem that creation had and if we are honest we can admit that we have from time to time is when we start to morph that image of who God is into who we are - making God in our image. If God looks like someone from your family, thinks like you think, likes who you like and hates who you hates - that isn’t God, friends. 

We cannot base who God is off of how we feel as humans. In fact, all too often we base God’s very presence in our lives and in the midst of situations off of our human perceptions, when really God is inviting us into something so much deeper than feeling. God is inviting us into a relationship built on trust.

But like the Israelites we don’t trust God because in the midst of basing God’s presence off of our perception and making God into our image we have forgotten who God truly is. In Exodus we find a wonderful description of who God says God is: The Lord proclaimed that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, steadfast in love and faithfulness. Forgiving but also seeing justice. 

The problem is when we get too comfortable when things are going well or too stressed out when things are going arry - we forget who God is. When the people of Israel were in captivity they forgot who God is. In fact, we forget a whole lot more than we remember. We have forgotten and mistaken the very characteristics of our God.

Enter Old Turtle. Old Turtle was known as a wise creature that rarely spoke, but she had to say something in the midst of these arguments. She told them that others would be coming who represented the very love of God in the world. And come they did - they were humans. But then, the people forgot that they were the message of God’s love and care for the world and they started to argue too. Having a very similar argument to creation at the beginning of the book. 

When we forget who God says God is, we start to argue. We start to demand proof that God exists. We start to make untrue claims - like God doesn’t walk with us in the midst of whatever we are going through. We fight because when our communal memory about God fails, our faiths starts to fade.

Which is exactly with the Israelites need the words of Isaiah. Their faith is starting to fade away.  When our faith fades - we forget who and what we believe. We forget why we believe. We stop sharing the stories of old. Israel had forgotten what they once knew - their God is god alone. And their God will never fail them. They are not hidden from the Lord. They are not forgotten. In fact, they are being lifted up by the Lord of all creation.

Isaiah lives into two tensions, brothers and sisters. On one hand, the prophet is clearly saying that as humans we will never fully understand God’s ways because they are so far above ours. We cannot even begin to fathom who God is. But on the other hand, God is in relationship with us. God is unchanging and will not leave us. And God gives new life to us today, even as God created everything so long ago. The tension between what we can’t know and what we must know. The balance between how we cannot fully know God and how God desires to be in relationship with us.

A lot of what we fight about in the world today is distracting us from knowing God. It’s a misrepresentation of who God is and what God is about. When we fight like the creation and then the humans did in Old Turtle, we miss the point. We are God’s creation and God’s fingerprints are all over each of us. We can see the very love of God in one another if we actually stop and look. But we have to know what we are looking for, which means we have to know God first. We have to remember who God is and never stop telling the stories of the faith. We have to hold up the faith, even when it seems to be fading and forgotten in the world around us. We need to keep telling each other about the God who loves us and is for us. Amen. Amen. Amen. 

“The Gospel in Storybooks: Where the Wild Things Are” Luke 15: 11-32

Where the Wild Things Are is not a book that I grew up with as a child, however, for many children Maurice Sendak’s book is a favorite. It has won the Caldecott Medal and has been made into a movie in recent years. 

Reading Where the Wild Things Are for the first time as an adult, I found myself thinking that Max, the main character, in all of his antics is both a rambuncious and imaginative child, but he also does not not when he takes things to far. In the first few pages he can be seen hammering nails into the wall and scaring the family dog - misbehavior that he was punished for as he was sent to his room. 

I have to wonder if the son in today’s parable known as the prodigal, but who is simply identified as the younger son, had a heart like young Max. Did he know what he was doing when he told his father, while he was still living, to give him the property that belonged to him. Did he realize how rude he was being? That he was essentially saying ‘I don’t want to wait until you’ve died to get what’s coming to me’? It’s a dishonorable request in any day and time. 

Then the younger son went on an adventure. He liquidated the property he was given and spent the money in any way imaginable. He traveled far away and spent the money on “dissolute living” until the famine came. Until he realized that he didn’t have a plan or any money. Or a family. It was fun while it lasted but now the fun was over. 

In the children’s book, Max also had a field day. His room turned into a forest which he traveled far beyond - across an ocean in fact, until he got to the area where the wild things are located. While others may have been scared of the fierce creatures, they followed Max’s commands and eventually made him their king. Which was all well and good - until he got bored. 

Children’s books can resemble the parables of Jesus in many ways. Parables were stories that Jesus told, in specific contexts, that say something about human nature. But they don’t stop there, they ask us as listeners to examine our hearts, often time after time. For children’s books and parables always have something new to teach us, no matter how many times we have engaged them before.

Take this parable for instance. How many of us have heard the parable of the prodigal son before? How many of us remember when Jesus told this story? Not as many. This story takes place after Jesus is having yet another run in with the pharisees about his table practices. The religious leaders accused Jesus of eating with sinners - and this parable was his response.

The parable of the prodigal son is one that we have probably engaged countless times - in devotions, Sunday School, and sermons. I know I have over the years. But the story keeps speaking. Keeps inviting us in. When I was in college, chapel attendance was required. After years of chapel services three times a week they would seem to blend together after a while, but I still remember a series where the preacher looked at this parable three separate days from different perspectives - the father, the older son, and the younger son. I have a colleague who once preached this sermon to college students from the perspective of the pig farmer who hired the younger son, and that stuck with me as well.

This parable is powerful because it invites us to examine our lives from different perspectives and check in on our relationship with ourself, others, and God. To the ancient hearer before we even get into the part of the story that we so often like to celebrate in church, about the younger son returning how, they would have been shocked. Shocked at the younger son’s crass request. Shocked that the older son looked on an said nothing. Shocked that the father actually gave the son his inheritance early without a word!

Maybe we need to be a  little more shocked brothers and sisters. Maybe we need to be a little more vigilant in identifying those times in our lives when we make demands on God that are crass. Maybe we need to be a little more aware of how our relationship with God can effect our relationship with other people. Maybe we need to be a little more aware of the brokenness in our lives that leads us to misguided understandings of God, even before we go astray. 

The famine hits and the younger son is left in the most uncomfortable position - penniless, working with pigs, which would have been unheard of at the time, as the listeners to Jesus would have considered them unclean. This was rock bottom. And as often comes with rock bottom, clarity starts to emerge. The younger son thinks that even the hired help at his father's house has it better than this - so he needs to go back home and beg for a job. Not beg to be reinstated as a son, but beg to simply be the hired help. 

For Max, rock bottom came as he looked upon his subjects, the wild beast, and realized that he was lonely. That he didn’t want to be a king - he wanted to be with people who loved him. 

What does rock bottom look like for us brothers and sisters? What causes us to realize that we’ve screwed up and strayed from God? What makes us go back into the arms of God’s grace?

Priest and author Henri Nou wen in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, says that so often we focus on this story from the perspective of the younger son and how he screwed up (maybe because we can identify with that as people who go astray), but really at the heart of this parable is the message of a forgiving and loving God the welcomes us back in ways far better than we deserve.

For as the younger son approached home the father came running out to him. He showed acts of reconciliation, offering to the son fine robes and rings and sandals. He even threw the younger son a party because he was so overjoyed! Max, too, was offered acts of reconciliation, after being sent to his room without dinner, he found dinner, still hot, waiting for him when he returned. 

This brothers and sisters is the story, the parable, Jesus told when he was charged with fellowshipping around the table, partying if you will, with those that the Pharisees deemed to be sinners. Do you get what Jesus was trying to say? That it’s not for us to judge who is beyond God’s forgiveness and grace. It is not for us to judge who is welcomed into the Kingdom of God. The Pharisees were acting as if they had been snubbed because Jesus was eating with the sinners instead of them, as if the presence of those they didn’t like kept them from being at the table. But the truth is, God gives us all more than we deserve. God welcomes us back, if we have a repentant heart. God let’s us start anew, seeking after a purity of heart, and God rejoices in that. Let us rejoice too, when the lost ones, including our very selves, come home to the family of God. Amen.

“The Gospel in Storybooks: Corduroy” John 15: 12-17 Eph 4: 9-10

The story of Corduroy was also amongst my favorite growing up. It tells the story of a little bear who had spent quite a long time living on a department store shelf. Corduroy yearned for a forever home, but time after time he was passed over. Finally, one day a little girl came and told her mother that she always wanted a bear like the one in the green overalls - Corduroy. The bear could feel his hope surge - would be finally get his home? But the mother told the little girl that Corduroy didn’t look very shiny and new, especially since he was missing a button. 

We are now in the second week of our sermon series about finding the Gospel message, or the good news of Jesus, in children’s story books. Last week we looked at A Porcupine Named Fluffy and saw how God changes our identity when we come to accept Christ as our savior.  This week we pick up Corduroy by Don Freeman. 

All the little bear desired was to be wanted. He wanted someone to pick him. How many of us can identify with that feeling? We want someone special to pick us to be their spouse. We want someone to choose us to be their friend. We want the employer to really want us to be their employee during job interviews. Part of human nature is to want to be wanted. 

The good news is that we have been chosen. Specifically, we have been chosen by Jesus Christ. One of our scripture lessons this morning came from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and it contained their really complex saying about Christ ascending and descending. What is Paul trying to get across? At its core, Paul is saying that Christ chose us. Christ chose to leave Heaven and to descend down to earth to be with us, human beings, so that we would have the opportunity to be in right relationship with God. Jesus chose the way of the cross because Jesus chose us, chose to die for us. It’s hard for us to warp our heads and hearts around.  

I love what happens next in today’s storybook. Corduroy becomes so distraught by what he hears the mom saying about his missing button that he takes it upon himself to try to go find it. He wander around the department store until he comes across the furniture section. There he finds a button sewn on a mattress that he assumes must be his. He tries so hard to pull it off that he falls backwards off the bed and knocks over a lamp.

Brothers and sisters, how many of us have been there? We try so hard to make things happen that we end up causing a mess? As humans, I think of the things that we struggle with the most about salvation is that we cannot earn it. We cannot earn God’s favor. We cannot make God chose us. We constantly live into the tension of not being able to earn God’s grace but living out of the beauty of the gift we have been given, and sometimes we go too far to one side or another. We try too hard and forget that God has given us a beautiful gift. Or we don’t live a life that reflects the gift that we’ve been given. Hear me, friends, we cannot earn God’s love because it was freely given to us on the cross. We simply need to accept that gift in our lives - the gift of God’s saving love for us.

When Corduroy woke up the next morning, the little girl had returned with her own money. She said that she chose this little bear, the one that she had always wanted. When they arrived at her home, Corduroy realizes that this is his forever home. In fact he even says, “This must be home. I  know I’ve always wanted a home.” Lisa, the little girl went on to pick him up and placed a button on him, saying that she loved him just the way he was but that he would be more comfortable this way. Finally, Corduroy realizes that this is what friendship looks like. 

Christ chose to not only make a way for our salvation brothers and sisters through the cross, but to make a way for us to be called friends of God as well. In the Gospel of John we find sayings of Jesus about the truths of love and friendship. To love one another is one of the greatest needs that we have in our lives, yet we aren’t always good at it. And the disciples aren’t always good at it. So we need Jesus to model for us what love looks like, and Jesus essentially says that love is sacrifice. 

Now hear me, there have been many ways that this passage of scripture has been used and abused over the years. We cannot demand that another person sacrifice for us. We cannot tell another human being what sacrifice looks like for them. But Jesus did say that love looks like laying down one’s life for one’s friends and that looks different for each of us. 

In an age where we sometimes physically move away fro our friends, sacrifice may look like driving to visit someone who is dear to us. In an age where work demands more and more of our time, sacrifice may mean having a set time on your calendar when you talk to your friends and see how they are doing. In an age, where being face to face with one another is no longer the norm, sacrifice may be taking a friend out for coffee. 

I think we all know what Jesus is saying in this passage, that he is going to lay down his literal life for the disciples and for the world. While studying abroad, one of the first places a friend and I found ourselves was in a memorial garden for fallen heroes in Melbourne Australia, where these words were etched in stone. There are some that literally give their lives, but that may not be what sacrifice looks like for all of us.

What Jesus is saying to all of us is that love isn’t just this internal feeling that you have. Love expresses itself in actions. Writing that letter. Giving of our time. Picking up a phone. Going to volunteer. The love in action of Jesus Christ bears fruit. It makes the name of Jesus known. It lets that Christ-light shine in the world. And like the love that little Lisa showed to Corduroy, this type of love restores and creates something new in the name of Jesus.

We have a lot of sayings and slogans around friendship. In the 1995 Disney film Toy Story, the theme song proclaimed, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” In the church we sing “What a friend we have in Jesus.” And we say things like “that’s what friends are for”. But I don’t think any of those truly capture the earth shattering reality that Jesus calls us friends. Friends are a gift from God. They help us. They show us compassion. They know us and love us anyway. They call us to be better versions of ourselves. They teach us patience, kindness, and forgiveness. They teach us how to care for one another. 

I always tell folks that I would much rather be known as a church where we are friends instead of friendly. Anyone can do friendly for one hour a week, but being friends changes us. And being friends like Jesus taught us to be, friends that show love in action and bear fruit for the Kingdom of God together, that truly changes us from the inside out and changes lives. 

Over the years many research studies have been done about how people come to know Christ and repeatedly the same thing comes back. 75-90 percent of people who come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior do so because of a friend or relative. Because of people who walk beside them and show love in action. 

The world needs us, brothers and sisters to share the love of Jesus Christ. The love of sacrifice. The love in action. Are we willing to go into the world and do so? Are we willing to love for the sake of the Kingdom of God? Amen. 

“The Gospel in Storybooks: A Porcupine Named Fluffy” Genesis 17: 5-15 John 15: 16

Growing up I loved books. My parents have always been avid readers and definitely passed that trait along to me. Even now the librarians in town see me coming and pull my books off the reserve shelf so they are ready for me. I still buy books as gifts for my nieces and nephews, friends and family. 

Books came to us in lots of different ways - through readers clubs and as gifts. Picked up in grocery store lines and from the library. The running joke in my family is that when I moved I took all of the good ones with me, but we still have shelves filled with children’s storybooks at my parents.

Story is a powerful thing - both for children and adults. I think this is one of the reasons Jesus used stories as teaching tools to illustrate what he was trying to say about the Kingdom of God. Stories open up our emotions and imaginations so we can connect deeply with what Jesus is trying to say.

For the next five weeks we are going to be looking at Gospel truths that are found in children’s storybooks. As noted before when we have engaged the world around us for illustrations of the power of the Gospel, we are not saying that the storybooks we will be looking at are the Gospel. Rather, we are saying that God made the world and God can use so many different things to make the Kingdom of God known, including the simple, beautiful stories in these books.

This week, as we kick off this sermon series, we look at one of my favorite storybooks, A Porcupine Named Fluffy by Helen Lester. This is a book about Mr. and Mrs. Porcupine who had a son who they treasured dearly. They thought long and hard about what they would name him, before settling on the name Fluffy. However, for Fluffy the name became problematic as he grew up. He didn’t think that he was living up to his name, so he tried to become like fluffy things, clouds and pillows. When that didn’t work he tried to change his appearance so that he would look fluffy, which didn’t work very well either.

The Bible has a lot to say about names. Names are important because they are to be a reflection of who we are. However, I think that we have lost some of the power of names in our culture. Did you ever notice that when you used to ask people about their name they would tell you a story - of a dear family member or friend that they were named after? Now it seems more names are coming from lists of what are popular at the time instead of stories. We have lost some of the power of names.

But it wasn’t that way in the Old Testament. During today’s scripture lesson names were of the upmost importance. But before we jump into this particular story, we need a little background. The Old Testament tells the story over and over again about the need for the people to re-establish a relationship with a holy God. It’s the story of God who made way after way for the nations to come to the Holy One, but repeatedly they turned away, wanting to go about things in their own timing and by their own means. 

One of the ways that God tried to draw the people back was by forming and relying on covenants. Covenants are promises, blessings, or commandments, made between two or more parties that can essentially say what is expected of each party. One of the images that comes to mind often with the word covenant is the promise God made with Israel when rescuing them from the hands of the Egyptians, saying that they would be his people and he would be there God.

But well before that covenant was made, we had this mornings covenant between God and Abram. Abram is being told that if he leaves that land that he has known and follow where God leads, God will make him the father of nations. His name will be great and will be known by kings and rulers. The sign of this covenant, the blessing of God, was to be the circumcision of males, as an outward sign of an inward promise. 

What I love about this promise that God is making with then Abram, soon to be Abraham, is that God has to know that this promise is being made with broken people. Even as great as Abraham will become, God knows that he isn’t perfect. He and Sari are certainly going to screw up along the way, yet God chooses them anyway, and takes their brokenness and redeems it for the sake of the nations.

As another sign of this blessing, God takes the opportunity to re-name Abram and Sari. They will know be known as Abraham and Sarah, claiming them as God’s very own. See covenants aren’t initiated by the people, friends, they are started by God and are above a sign of God’s faithfulness towards us. And the re-naming isn’t initiated by Abram and Sari, but by God.

Maybe Abram and Sari didn’t sense the disconnect between who they were and their name, like Fluffy did in the story, but God did. God took the moment to claim and re-name this couple as a way of saying, “you once were…, but now you are….”. God was reminding them not only that they are God’s but that God is in control.

Here’s this couple, well into their 90s, past child bearing years, being told that they would  be the father and mother of nations even though they currently didn’t even have one child. But God is in control. God is telling them that their name would be made known, even though currently they weren’t known to anyone as they wandered from place to place, but God is in control. They were told that they would have a place because of God, even though right now they were nomadic, but God is in control.

As Christians we don’t necessarily get new names when we come to accept Christ as a sign of the covenant God has with us, though this is certainly the case in some Christian households and traditions. Notice in the book, when a porcupine named Fluffy meets a rhino named Hippo, they both stop searching to become like their name, but instead are accepted as they are. That is how it is with us, brothers and sisters. When we come to Jesus, as broken as we may be, Jesus says “you are mine”. When we come to Jesus, we are reminded that it isn’t by what we have done, but by the love of God. In the Gospel of John we find, “you did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appoint you to go and bear much fruit.” 

Our covenant with Christ, like that covenant Abram and God made so long ago, changes us. We may not have  a name change, but our lives change. How we perceive ourselves change. God takes the brokenness in our lives and uses it, yes even our brokenness, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. People around us notice the change in our hearts and God uses us to spread the Good News.

Friends, have you entered into the life changing relationship with Jesus yet? If not, today is your day to say that God is in control. Have you accepted that God takes your brokenness and redeems it for the sake of the Gospel? If so, then go out and proclaim the name of God. Tell your story of how God has claimed you and changed you, by the love of Jesus Christ, and go forth and bear much fruit. Amen.