Failure to Communicate

I am not much on fishing. It takes too much patience. I basically want to skip the "middle man" and have my fish on a plate with at little tartar sauce.

So when the folks in our little country church insisted that we go fishing with them on the Outer Banks we went...You know to be "part" of things...since at that rural church I was indeed a "fish out of water." It was there that I discovered that I am "not" a country boy although I did learn to bail hay, observed but did not participate in a early morning pig slaughter, nursed a calf until it was sent off only to return as hamburger, drilled a field (which for you city folks means drive a tractor behind which is this "drill" which planted the seeds in the field as you drove) and had my very own CB radio with the handle, 'Rabbi.'"

Anyway we went fishing and the fish were not biting so we drove around the sand dunes back in the days when they let you do such things. I remember Dot saying, "Look at the big tire." Betsy and I looked but could not see any big tire washed up on the beach or anything resembling a tire. "You mean you can't see that tire?" she insisted. "No..." Finally her husband Donnie pulled up, swung open the door on his four-wheel drive and pointed to a huge radio "tower."

"O, that big tire," we both said. We had a failure to communicate. In their language tower sounded like "tire." Betsy and I still point to those big "tires" as we ride along country roads.

The field in which I work has a good deal of missed communication in it. I hear people talking about Jesus all the time but I wonder just who it is they refer to. I hear about a lot of different Jesus-es. There is the one that will bless you if you follow the right formulas. There is the one that will toss you aside if you do not walk the straight and narrow. There is the one that seems to be always keeping score.

Then there is the one I encountered when I was 17 who reached out and touched my hands. Yea, I know it sounds....uh...strange. It felt strange too. I've told that story many times. I questioned the validity of it, ran from it, analyzed it to death and figured it was my "imagination" but here I am talking about that Jesus early one Sunday morning.

You say "tire" and I say "tower." You say "Jezzus" and I say "Jesus." In the "Quest for the Historical Jesus," Albert Switzer said it this way;
"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake side, He came to those
men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word, 'Follow me' and sets us to the tasks
which He has to fulfill for out time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they
be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they
shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall in their own
experience Who He is."

Well said...Even when we have a failure to communicate and see him in so many ways...he still comes...
Bless you
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org