Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Sandwich Board God

We have spent the last week at a church plant in Columbia, South Carolina. Most of the week was spent doing construction work in renovating the building to get it ready for the church to open next month. Friday, however, we had the opportunity to wake up early and help out with handing free coffee and donuts to the cars that drove by.
I somehow was assigned the duty of sign-holder.
We all know the fundraisers and car washes that subject certain members of the organization to the job of holding a sign and drawing as much attention to themselves as possible. They are the idiots on the sidewalk.
Friday I got to be the idiot on the sidewalk.
I had my poster board advertising the free gifts, my forced smile, and my gesturing arm pointing the direction of the donuts. I had to have seen thousands of cars out there that passed me by, ignoring by every effort they could muster the idiot with the dancing poster board.
It amazed me that so many people would refuse free donuts. The idea of refusing any food for that matter has never occurred to me. There was no catch, no gimmick, and no commitment yet people still kept driving.
This, of course got me thinking.
How many of us just keep driving when God is trying to give us free Life. He is offering the greatest gift of all and we keep driving by.
Bare with me, this might get cheesy. I am a Christian, and if there is one thing Christians are good at, it is being cheesy.
As I stood on that corner waving that sign I noticed a lot different responses of the drivers that whizzed by. The one I noticed the most was where people would catch a glance of the 6-foot idiot with a sign out of the corner of their eye and immediately turn the other way. It was as if they were afraid that if they looked at the sign too long they would be hypnotized into buying a timeshare they could never get out of or donating their blood to some bizarre cause. They did not even want to know what the sign said because they already convinced they did not want what I was offering.
Maybe they were so determined to get where they were going that they could not let anything distract them from their goal, even if it would have been beneficial to them. Maybe they had stopped to read the signs before and had been sucked into something that hurt them and burned them from ever reading a sign like that again.
We do this to God all the time. He does something small to get our attention and let us know that He already has everything we could ever want and need and just wants to give it to us and we just keep driving.
It is a sobering and humbling thought when we realize that God is willing to be the idiot on the sidewalk just to give us everything we want in life.
Some people found themselves reading my sign, possibly by accident, and would smile and wave at me. I got the impression that they felt they were supporting me by waving at me. Like they felt that smiling and waving was just as good as pulling over and receiving the free gift. I could imagine that they were thinking something like “I know I am better than those jerks who just drove by without even acknowledging this poor kid, so I will just give a little smile and it will be enough. I don’t have to actually receive the gift; I just have to acknowledge that it is there.”
So many of us just acknowledge God. We might give Him credit for the creation of the universe or the story you saw on the news about the child who survived a house fire but do we ever pull over and receive what He has to offer. Do we ever benefit from our acknowledgement? God did more than acknowledge you- in fact He has done everything possible to know you. He wants to be in a relationship with you and take away your pain. He wants to be a part of your life and let you get to know Him as deeply as He knows you. He wants to give you free donuts.
There were a good amount of cars that drove by, read the sign, and then would proceed to hold up a cup of coffee. It was as if they were saying “Hey idiot with the sign, I support what you are doing and all, but I already have everything you are trying to give me. By my own effort I have fulfilled all of my needs and my wants without you. You seem like a good kid but I don’t need you. Try the next car.”
What if there is more? Sure you may be able to raise a family on your own- you may even be able to become a business success on your own, maybe you have discovered that you have the capability of making all your dreams come true by your own effort without any help at all.
Who do you think made you with that ability? Who do you think gave you the “common sense” and determination you have always counted on to get you where you are going?
You can try it on your own, you might make it. God created you to do more than just make it. He created you to thrive and be more than you can imagine being. He created you to be more than what you are right now.
God is standing on your street corner. If you have ever prayed for a sign then you better be prepared to pull over when you see one. You have the decision; will you keep driving down the road you have traveled that you know ends in a ditch anyway having no regard to what He is trying to tell you? Or will you just pull over and pick up your free donuts?

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