While waiting for my wife to select the perfect potatoes from the mound of potatoes in the grocery store my eye caught a beautiful sliced in half watermelon. There it was lusciously red and juicily smiling at me from under its clear plastic wrap. I was tempted until I saw the $7.99 price. Obviously the grocer also thought it was tempting. But really now sixteen dollars for a watermelon!
I tried once to tell one of my grad classes about being a boy and going to the Giant Supermarket where there were a hundred or so watermelons stacked inside the door. There was a large knife on the pile and before you purchased one you could plug it and taste it. If it didn’t suit your palate it was tossed aside. They were ninety-eight cents apiece. I could tell from their expressions they did not believe me. How could anything so outrageous really have been?
The Gospel is like that. It is an outrageous story. The universe is filled with a billion galaxies. Why would a Creator of such wonder come here to save us? It sounds so provincial. Surely it is the product of our ego-centricity. We begin the story with our being made in the Creator’s image. Really? The story begins focused on our conceit and it gets far more worse when we get to the cross. Just who in the universe do we think we are? In Romans and Galatians Paul tries to tell us we are the adopted sons of that Creator, princes and princesses destined to, according to John, sit with Him in His very own throne.
Written by Roger Bothwell on May 23, 2012
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org