National Believe Day

In this morning's paper we noticed an ad that said today is National 'Believe' day. National 'Believe' day? Of course the retailer meant Santa.

We believe in the Tooth Fairy, vampires, transformers, Santa and us. As Lily said, we want to believe in anything that does not hold us accountable. We want to live in the grey, forgetting that grey is an extremely watered down black and white.

When someone wearing a white jacket tells you all the tests are in and you will be dead in six months do you get a second opinion? I wonder what the percentages of 'would' and 'would not' are? Like so much in life your resources, position, status would influence what you could and could not do, but what would your initial reaction to the news be? Would you believe you will be dead in six months? Do you believe the white coat?

You come home to find a policeman standing on your porch. He says you cannot go in your house because there is a tiger in the living room. There is no zoo for miles around. You've never seen this man before, but he is wearing what seems to be a police uniform.

In both cases what prompts us to believe is what they are wearing, what we see. Both messages may be true, but it is what we see them wearing that makes us believe.

Going to the movies, watching the news on television, playing video games are all getting more and more sophisticated with the ability to make what is unreal look real. Only the script writer, the creator, knows what is real, what facts have been massaged, what facts have been left out, in other words 'spin.' The spin, the motive behind how you present something comes from your agenda.

In a world of spin it can sometimes be difficult to know what to believe. Persuasive rhetoric can be as powerful as technology. 1 John 4:1 tells us to test the spirits. The Bible also tells us to seek wise counsel, get a second opinion.

What is the spin? What is the ultimate agenda? When it comes to faith we need to decide for ourselves what we believe and what we don't believe; what we want to identify with, even if it costs us our life, this life or the life after.

I believe God always stands between us and eternal destruction. We have to go around God to destroy ourselves. That means I believe that every one of the billions of us who have lived, live now, and will live after us, had or will have a personal encounter, a personal experience of God.

Many will say it was only a coincidence. Some will dismiss their sudden tears as passing emotion. Some will dismiss that line of thinking as nonsense. Others will write songs that include a phrase that strangely touches them in a way they don't understand. Ultimately we all handle our encounters with God differently, but we all have them, whether we deny them or not. How we respond to these encounters hardens or softens our hearts. In Pharaoh's case it hardened his heart.

I especially enjoy when God makes God's presence known through statistical impossibilities. Even then we merely shrug. Remember Jason McElwain, the young autistic basketball player who scored like twenty points in three minutes in the only high school basketball game he ever played in? How do we explain that?

We need to be suspicious and doubtful, but discerning. We need to open our minds to the possibilities that our hearts are on to something wonderful. What's the motive? Is there an agenda behind what happened? What are the results? Did it benefit me or someone else? Our hearts can see what our minds cannot, but we can learn to listen.

Bad things come to all of us. Tragic things come to many. It is the price we all pay for thousands of years of doing life our way; believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and trying to live in the grey only to discover as Lily said this morning, "We want to believe in anything that does not hold us accountable."

Proverbs 1:25-27 Because I have called and you refused,
have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,
and because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when panic strikes you,
when panic strikes you like a storm,
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.