Piloting Faith: Is God sick of us?

A Word for the Day...

This past week, I spent time reading the story of Noah building the ark because God was preparing to destroy the world. It’s a “made for Hollywood” drama (literally) based on the terrifying idea that people were so hopelessly corrupt that God simply gave up and decided to destroy the world. Yet God saved a few – a sadly odd bunch, as it turns out – to start the “human” project anew.

The stories we tell ourselves as humans – stories of love and heartbreak, violence and peace, belonging and desertion – are the stories that give shape to how we see our world and how we relate to that world we see. Our stories – often called myths or archetypes – tell us who we are, how we should function in the world, and what our values should be. Every culture has it’s guiding stories.

Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the stories we are telling ourselves as a culture. When we look at the movies in the box-office, we see titles like "Avengers", "Hotel Mumbai", "Angel Has Fallen", "Terminator", and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." We see a narrative of despair, power abuse, hopelessness, lone heroes and heroines (saviors), total destruction, and impossible choices. It is as if we are subconsciously worried that God is sick of us and ready to start over.

Or perhaps we are sick of ourselves and the ways we are destroying our planet, hurting the most vulnerable in our society, and catering to profit over the common good? Maybe God doesn’t ever get sick of us. Maybe that is just a story we tell ourselves.

What stories are guides in your life? Why? What power do they have for you, for better and for worse?

Here is what I know for sure: God has loved you, loves you now and will always love you. Why don’t you start telling yourself and others that story…and let’s see what happens to our world.

We are all in this together,

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

God,

In the face of great need,
When the work feels huge
and I feel small,
may I learn of the power of
the mustard seed.
May I trust that my showing up,
Taking root,
Growing branches,
be enough to do
small great things that heal the world.

Amen.