Blessed are the Cracked

Anton DeWet

Genesis 12:1-9  (Mother’s Day/Festival of the Family Day)

A minister parks his car and is on his way to the church office when he hears a cat calling in distress. He begins to look around and is about to walk on when the pitiful moaning of the cat just gets a little more pitiful and he walks back to the general area where he thought the crying had come from. Getting there he looks up and sees a cat stuck in the highest branches.

Now, if you have every tried coaxing a cat down from a tree you know it just never works. So after a few fruitless efforts the minister is about to give up when he has a bright idea. In the trunk of his car is a rope. He gets the rope, ties it to the tree and ties the other end to the car, thinking that if he could bend the tree he might be able to get to the kitty.

After a few tries the cat is just about within reach and he gets back into the car to pull the tree down just that little bit when the inevitable happens; the rope snaps and the cat becomes airborne.

The exasperated minister searches the whole neighborhood for the cat and eventually gives up with a heavy heart.

Two weeks later he is in the grocery store when he runs into one of the church members shopping for cat food. He finds this strange as he knows this person to really dislike cats so he asks her about it.

“Pastor, you won’t believe this story…” she begins. You know how I hate cats. Well, my daughter has been nagging me for months for a cat so the other day I just couldn’t take it any longer and I said to her;
“If God gives you a cat you can keep it.”

She said, “so my 9 year old daughter goes out into the garden and starts praying—well, and this is the part you will not believe…”

We work so hard to establish ourselves in life. We go to school for 12 years and then some of us go on to college or some other institution of learning. We begin a job, get promoted or make changes to our lives. Some get married and find partners and later some get unmarried. Some have children and later grandchildren. We dream of what we hope to accomplish and we have visions for our future. Everything asks for great effort and dedication from our end and we bend the trees to reach those goals. But how often our plans are thwarted. Just as we seem to be on track the rope breaks and there go the dreams.

We adapt, start over, begin the process again and low and behold, not long and the rope snaps and there go the plans again.

Very few among us can say that our lives worked out the way we intended for them to work out. We never anticipated a failed marriage, a bankruptcy, a career change, the death of a beloved, the illness that changes our lives, or the pink slip at work.

Here at Faith Church our banner reminds us that this year it has been 50 years ago that our church was established by people who had a vision for it. I paged through some of the oldest documents we have from that time. You should have seen the plans. Around where the house is—in that general direction—a huge 600 seat sanctuary was to be built because the trends showed that Faith UCC would soon grow into a 600 member church. But somewhere the rope snapped and the blueprints flew into storage bag.

The beginning of last year we began a dream to return our sanctuary into a place we could once again be proud of. No more peeling and disintegrating ceilings. We did a great job and the place looks beautiful. And then the economy’s rope snapped.

But what we don’t always admit is that what appears to be a disaster in the immediate wake of an experience that changes the direction of one’s life, are often new opportunities and new gifts falling into our reach in strange and unforeseen ways like the little girl who prayed for a cat.

As people of faith we believe that the future is always Gods future beaconing us on. Don’t get blinded by a broken dream—begin to look around you and expect new opportunities to start raining down on you.

I always dreamed of turning our one farm into a game farm. 6,500 acres of sheer beauty filled with the animals that I so loved. I had visions as child of where my house would be built. I had picked the spot out among the goosey trees just above the river near the granite outcrops where the hyraxes romped and the monitor lizards basked in the sun. The place I once stood when the greatest kudu bull I had ever seen in my life thundered out of the bush and across a meadow on the other side of the river. Yes, I knew the exact spot. And I would take care of my parents as they grew older. And then came a war and we could no longer live there. The rope snapped and we were launched into another life. And new opportunities opened up for us.

I became a minister—not a farmer. I have never been back to that spot in 30 years now but I still see it with the gloriosa lilies growing wild among the rocks. My little Eden. But God opened new opportunities and here I am with my family, exposed to one of the  most exciting cultures in the world. How limited I might have been had my original dream come true.

God told Abram: “Get up and go from your country, your family, and your father’s home to a land that I will show you…”

Don’t be misled by this legend told and retold a million times by our faith ancestors. I cannot imagine anyone ever forsaking the place they call home without a sense of great loss and grief. Imagine for a moment Abraham telling his wife Sara about this new move.

“Who told you what? We’re moving because you heard a voice!”

There is trauma in this event which we overlook. It is devastating to leave the place you love and the people you love. It’s the equivalent of the rope breaking and the tree’s momentum sending you flying to places you never imagined.

A person walks out of a bar in Ireland when he feels a gun in his back. “Catholic or protestant”, a voice asks. Thinking quickly this person knowing the history of Ireland’s religious troubles responds: “Jewish.”

“I must be the luckiest Arab in Ireland tonight,” the gun bearer replies.

Sometimes it feels as though we just can’t win. But I want to share with you the story of our faith forebears. Abram and Sara where childless. The ultimate disaster in their society at that time. A scandal and shame. The snapping of the rope.

But in the midst of calamity they are flung out of their place of security and into a foreign and frightening scenario. In the process a journey begins that ends in a promised land. They move from scandal of childlessness to a single child born in their older years and with him a nation is born. A faith is born that becomes in time the Jewish faith and from that develops Christianity. We are here today because Abraham and Mrs. Abraham were flung out of their realm of comfort into a new life and destination.

God invites us to think about life in terms of trust. We lose a child—we loose a spouse—we lose a job—we lose a house—we lose a country and we might even lose a church building—and we think this is it. The rope has snapped for the last time. But what God does is actually launch us into a new life with a new destination and with new experiences so that when we come to the end of our lives we can look back and say: “It is well with my soul.”

Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, wounded ones and dancing ones, life is a gift from God. We must learn to embrace it every single day anew. We must learn not to imagine for a moment that when the rope breaks that the disaster will overcome us. We are too strong for that. We are too resilient for that. We have too much potential for that. We are simply on our way to a new destination.

Lastly, God’s idea of a perfect world is using imperfect people to accomplish great things. Someone said, “blessed are the cracked, for they let the light through.”

If you feel like the walking wounded whether it is your life plans that have changed by circumstances beyond your control or you feel you have not truly reached the goals you set for your life, God finds you the perfect candidate to do God’s work. For God can only use the cracked for they let the light shine through. The great figures of the Bible were all cracked people but it just made for the light of God to shine brightly through them.

So, if you feel cracked and somewhat airborne today, remember that you are a magnificent person because you are God’s child. Start looking forward to the landing and few more cracks, and then, dust yourself off, give thanks to God, and start dreaming dreams of doing God’s work. Happy landings. Amen.

Genesis 12:1-9 (The Message)

God told Abram: “Get up and go from your country, your family, and your father’s home
to a land that I will show you.

I’ll make you a great nation
and bless you.
I’ll make you famous;
you’ll be a blessing.
I’ll bless those who bless you;
those who curse you I’ll curse.
All the families of the Earth
will be blessed through you.”

So Abram got up and left just as God said, and Lot left with him.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot with him,
along with all the possessions and servants they had gotten in Haran,
and set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.

Abram and Sarai passed through the country as far as Shechem and the Oak of Moreh.
At that time the Canaanites occupied the land.
God appeared to Abram and Sarai and said, “I will give this land to your children.”
Abram built an altar at the place God had appeared to him.

They moved on from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched their tent
between Bethel to the west and Ai to the east.
Abram built an altar there and prayed to God.