Experiencing God: Our Revealing God

"Experiencing God:  Our Revealing God"
Psalm 19:1-10

God was wandering up and down the neighborhoods.  But no one saw it was God.  Some saw a UPS driver.  Others saw a gardner mowing the lawn.  Still others saw a grade school kid riding her bike up and down the street.  They didn’t figure out all of them were God in disguise.

Eventually God ended up where God would usually end up—Floyd’s house.  God never knocked at Floyd’s.  Just walked right in.  “Hi, Floyd,” God said.
“Hey, God,” Floyd responded.  “Out for a walk again, I see,” said Floyd.
“Yup,” God said tersely.  God wasn’t very wordy on this particular day.
“The usual?” Floyd asked.
“Sure,” God said.

Floyd left the room and went into the kitchen.  He pulled the root beer out of the refrigerator and the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and started making two root beer floats.  “The cribbage board and cards are there on the table just where we left them from the last time,” Floyd called out from the kitchen.  “Go ahead and deal, since I kicked your butt last time.”  Floyd heard the cards being shuffled.

“These games with an combination of skill and an element of chance are so frustrating,” said God.  “If they were one or the other, I could beat you.  But I can’t manipulate this game.  It’s aggravating.”

“Poor God,” Floyd said, bringing in the root beer floats.  “Let me get out the world’s smallest violin.”

“Oh, now you’re going to gloat about beating me.  That’s a sin, you know,” God thundered.
“What’s a sin?” Floyd asked.  “Gloating, or beating God at cribbage?”
“Oh, stick your foamy mug in your pie hole and put your two cards in the crib,” God said with a half smile.

After playing for a while, God ahead by 11 points, Floyd asked, “So, why are you here?  Needing some more advice?”
“You’re so cocky,” God said.  “That’s going to get you into trouble one of these days.  You know humility is a virtue.  By the way, just to knock you down a couple of notches, I have fifteen two, fifteen four, and two double runs of eight make 20.  Read ‘em and weep.”
Floyd sat there with his mouth agape, exhaled almost all the breath out of his lungs and said, “Oh brother.”  There was no way he was going to win this game.

After a few more hands had been played, God said, “I’m thinking about changing things up.”
“How so?” Floyd asked.
“I haven’t quite decided,” said God.  “I’ve always tried to reveal myself to people so they can get to know me.  I’ve done this in a few ways.  But people don’t seem to care if they know me or not.  So I’m thinking about going more obscure, even more mysterious.”

“Hmmm,” Floyd said looking at the six cards in his hand.  “There is no shortage of people who say they know what you’re thinking all the time.  Take me for instance.  I sure would like to know which two cards you’re thinking about putting in my crib,” Floyd muttered.
“I’ll tell you right out,” said God.  “They are two great cards.”
“Yeah, right,” said Floyd.  Floyd paused, threw two of his cards in the crib and waited for God to cut the deck for him.  “I suppose,” Floyd said, “it wouldn’t matter how much or how little you reveal of your self.  Some people aren’t going to care.  And others will make too much of it.”
“Exactly,” said God.  “What’s the difference if I’m known or unknown?  People will make whatever of it they want anyway.”

“Well, let’s explore your options,” Floyd said, laying his cards face down on the table.  “You could be barely known.  But that would leave your self up to others wide interpretation.”
“And what’s the difference between that and what’s happening now?” God asked.  “I reveal myself to someone and they take that in a direction I totally didn’t want them to go.”
Floyd shook his head yes.  “For example,” Floyd said, “I’ve always taken the revelation of your cribbage playing as you being a really bad player.”
“Zip it,” said God, “or I’ll glue your lips together, permanently.”
Floyd motioned God to speak on.
“The other side of this is I have created and designed the world in such a way that people can catch a revelation of myself in nature.  It’s a more round about way, but people can still see how I’ve revealed something about myself in the world around them.”
“That’s true,” said Floyd.  After taking a quaff from his root beer float, Floyd went on to say, “It’s just that that kind of revelation takes more work on our part to see you in nature.  People, I’ve found, want to do as little work as possible putting two and two together.  They just want the direct revelation of yourself—just appear, or speak, and get it over with.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” God said.

“So,” said Floyd, “I guess another option would be to be a recluse God and be totally unknown.  Just totally isolate yourself.  Intentionally separate yourself from all the ways one can be known.  That way, nobody will make any misinterpretations of you, because they won’t know you exist.”
“Why be God if no one knows you exist?” God asked.
“Some people don’t think you exist now,” said Floyd.  “So for them it’s not going to make much difference.”
“And they are fools!” God bellowed.  “It’s clear, I am,” God said a little quietly.
“So why would you be considering going dark on the world?  Why would you want to be unknown?” Floyd asked.  “I mean, if you became totally reclusive and never revealed yourself in any way, what’s the difference between the fool who says you don’t exist and the person who doesn’t see any vision of your self-revelation because that’s the way you decided to be?”
“You know,” said God, “besides the root beer floats, that’s why I come here to talk to you.”
“It just seems to me,” said Floyd, “to be totally unknown would be to not exist.  The only way you exist is by being known by someone.”
“You know me, Floyd,” God said.
“So you exist!  Congratulations!” Floyd clapped God on the back.  “As long as I’m alive, you’ll exist then.”
God smiled.

“I went over to the Lutheran Church a couple of Sunday’s ago,” Floyd started out.  “It was after worship.  They were having a baked potato feed as some fund raiser.  I like baked potatoes, so I went.”
God rubbed his chin wondering where Floyd was going with this.
“I walked in.  There was a guy sitting at a card table.  A bucket of money on the table.  I put my check in.  I got in line.  Got my baked potato.  Fixed it all up.  They even had real crumbly bacon bits.”
“Ohhh, I love bacon,” God said.  “Love to smell it frying.”
“Who doesn’t,” Floyd almost drooled.  “Anyway, there weren’t many seats left, so I squeezed into one in the middle section of the long tables.”
“So is this going anywhere,” said God.  “We have cribbage to play.”
“Wow.  You’re so impatient,” Floyd said.  “I thought you liked a good story.”
“I do like a good story,” replied God.  “That’s why I invented people.”
“OK, then; keep your skirt on.  I’m getting to the good part,” Floyd said.  “So I sit down there in the midst of a bunch of people.  They’re all talking.  I don’t know any of them.  But none of them says anything to me!  Not from the time I walk in and put my money in the plastic bucket to the time I finally get up and leave.  Not a ‘Hi,’ or ‘How are you doing?’  Not a thing.  It’s as if I was totally unknown and invisible.  It was awful.”
“And your point is?” asked God.
“I’m a human.  You’re God, for God’s sake.  If I didn’t like being unknown and invisible, you will hate it.”
“Hmmm,” God hummed, clicking the edge of his cards on the table.

“Exactly,” Floyd said.  “You only have one option, it seems to me.  You need to be out there.  You need to be revealing yourself to people.  You need to be known, and visible.  And you need to reveal yourself in every way you can, whether it be through nature, or talking to old guys like me.”
“It is risky,” said God.
“Of course it’s going to be risky,” Floyd said.  “That’s what revealing yourself is all about.  Taking a risk someone might not get it.  And taking the risk that someone just might get it.”
“Most people aren’t going to get it,” said God.  “And everyone will be expecting me to say something directly in their ear.  No one wants to do the work of making sense of the mystery of my self revelation.  They think I’ve got to sit down with all of them and play cards with them, or something, just to prove I’m real.  By the way, do you have any more ice cream—I need another scoop or two in my float.”
“I’ll be right back,” said Floyd grabbing God’s mug.  “You know what I was just thinking,” Floyd called from the kitchen.
“Of course I know; I’m God…duh!”
“Well, pretend you weren’t reading my mind,” said Floyd.
“Not much to read there anyway—about a comic book’s worth,” God muttered.

“I heard that,” Floyd said, coming out of the kitchen with two refreshed root beer floats.  “A little sarcastic today, aren’t we, God?  Anyway, what I was thinking, as you already know, is about imagination.  You gave us imagination.  If you didn’t give us an imagination, we wouldn’t be able to play around with your self-revelations.  We would only take things as they are.  We’d all be boring realists.”
“So,” said God taking a drink of his float.  Floyd made a motion to God pointing to his upper lip.  God got a napkin and wiped the root beer foam mustache off his upper lip.
“So,” said Floyd, “I think you count on us to use our imaginations when you reveal yourself to us so we can see the reality beyond the real.  Our imaginations give us the ability to put two and two together, when we’re looking around at the world, and see your revelation of yourself behind it all.”
“You’re getting too smart for your overalls, Floyd,” God said.
“But there’s more!”  God gave Floyd the eye roll.  “Our imaginations gave us the ability to see your hidden self-revelations when we look at the world, but those imaginations can get us into trouble seeing what’s not there—making you out to be something you aren’t.”  Floyd smiled to himself, thinking he had stumbled upon something very important.

“Listen,” said God.  “I came here to play cribbage.  Have a little fun.  Take a break from all the God-work I’ve got to do all the time.  Are we going to play or what?”
“I’ve been sitting here this whole time waiting for you to put your two cards in the crib,” Floyd said.  “Get on with it so I can make my comeback.”
“Isn’t going to happen,” said God.  “I predestined this win a long, long time ago.”