August 9
God Sightings
Have you heard anyone talk about their grandchildren lately? If you will listen, most grandparents are more than happy to tell you how little Johnny took his first step, is learning to drive or about to go to college. To hear the proud grandparent tell the story, you’d think they were the first to have the experience. Most of us are willing to indulge the story teller with polite attention.
Why is there such a strong compulsion to talk about our surgeries? I’ve never enjoyed these conversations. Just in case you are wondering, I don’t want to view the video of your surgery or see your gall stones in the jar. Yet, I find myself drawn to tell stories about my own recent surgeries. Why is that? I know people really aren’t interested, yet I often find myself starting sentences with, “Well, during my second surgery, I …”
If the academy honored story telling, they would have to have a “somebody done me wrong” category. Most of us have these stories and we relish in retelling them. Of course, we were totally in the right and they were absolutely wrong—no gray area here. It seems with the passing of time that they get more wrong and we get more right. The telling of these stories gives us a feeling of moral superiority.
The Bible is full of stories too. They are “God sightings.” Did you hear about the one where a teenage boy killed a giant with five smooth stones and a slingshot? How about the time a preacher made a giant fish sick to its stomach and it vomited him out on the shore? Have you seen God at work in your life lately? Instead of talking about your grandchildren, surgeries, or how “somebody did you wrong,” why not talk about how God is at work in your life? Now that’s a story I’d like to hear.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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