Saturday, July 25, 2009

Grab Hold

In my morning time the words from Hebrews read, "We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go" (From chapter 6..I use Eugene Peterson's translation, "The Message" for my personal time..it reads like a book.)

These words remind me of that scene when a group of us were standing in airport at Tel Aviv. We were surrounded by a large group of people who were speaking either Yiddish or Hebrew. Suddenly I felt someone grab me around the leg. I looked down to see a little girl in a lacy blue dress holding tight to my leg.

She looked up into my face and realized that she had grabbed the wrong leg. She started to cry but of course my words of comfort meant nothing to her as we did not speak the same language. I saw her run toward some other people. She seemed so lost and scared. Then it happened. She turned and with a look of recognition she ran toward a tall dark skinned man screaming a word that I knew, "Abba, Abba, Abba."

The man reached down and pulled his little girl up into his sheltering arms.

"Abba" is what Jesus called God that evening as he knelt in the garden of Gethsemane as he asked that the "cup be taken from him." This was a child seeking the shelter of "daddy."

We do not have to even know the language. We simply have to "grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go."

I understand why many skeptics in this world can not believe it, but it's true. The God of those billions of galaxies out there beyond our imagining is "daddy." Grab hold.
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org

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