No Secrets

Summer is almost here, and S and I are beginning to look at our “outside spaces,” planning improvements and grill menus. Last weekend we planted begonias and herbs plus added some mulch to a few beds. We decided our porch furniture could use a face-lift. While we were at Wal-Mart buying volcano ingredients (doesn’t everyone buy volcano ingredients at Wal-Mart?) we checked out the porch furniture cushions.

All of the porch furniture cushions were hanging on a wall in the gardening section. The ones we wanted were hanging very high. Now, you must understand that my husband is 6’4”, and is not used to having items be too high for him to reach (it is really a rare occurrence), so after determining that he couldn’t get them down, he went off to find someone who could. His hard work yielded three people who couldn’t help us, and we were about ready to decide that sitting on the bare chairs might be less painful than buying cushions. A new person, apparently sent by one of the “helpless” people, came by, saw the problem, frowned at us for wanting to buy cushions in the first place, and then left to go get the “lift.”

He returned, riding an eight foot tall (?) motorized lift. It barely made it through the doorway and into the aisles. I so very much wanted to laugh at the man, but this was obviously “the way it must be done.” Is there not a simpler way to lift cushions (that way less than a couple of pounds, I’m sure) of a hook than an eight-foot tall, motorized lift? Like maybe a two-foot step ladder? A long pole with a hook on the end? A stepstool?

I do that sometimes – make things SO COMPLICATED, when, really, simple would get the job done so much more easily.

I really like email. Anyone who knows me knows that I like email. With email, I can speak to 100 people at a time, all across the state. I can ask someone a question at midnight when he/she is probably sleeping (and I should be sleeping). During a ten minute break at work, I can send out messages to all of the people I need to talk to, and then go back to work. I can’t do any of that with a phone.

One day I was trying to work out some details of a couple of projects with our church secretary. Emails were going back and forth at an alarming rate. We were both obviously sitting at our desks, speaking through the keyboards. Finally I laughed at myself, and picked up the phone to talk to her – so much more simple and effective. Sometimes we miss the easy answer because we are so caught up in what seems usual or routine.

In Sunday school this Sunday we were talking about the DaVinci Code. That lead to a discussion of gnosticism. Joe spoke of how Gnostics often believes that they had a “secret knowledge” that would lead to salvation. We also discussed how some people or even churches have that belief today – that they hold a “secret” key to salvation that no one else has.

God went to some pretty long-lengths to make sure that His plan for our salvation was not secret. Why do some people continue to insist that they DO hold a secret key or belief?

We talked in Sunday school that there are people who like to feel that God has shared a special knowledge with them – it makes them feel important or powerful. (As an aside, I was watching Leno last night, and he told a joke about an evangelist who said, “God was speaking to me, and if I heard him right…” Leno said, “God was speaking to you, and you weren’t listening well enough to know if you got it right? Shouldn’t you have been paying more attention?”)

Setting aside the power issues involved, if someone came up to you and told you that he held the secret to salvation, and that he would share it with you, wouldn’t you be tempted to accept the CERTAINTY of that? Here’s your pass card; step right in.

We sometimes overlook the simple truth of “Jesus love me, this I know” because we have a need to make everything more complicated. We want a key or a password. We want the certainty of salvation that we believe that would provide. I’m not saying that grace is easy – it isn’t. In fact, it is the simplicity of it that makes it so hard.

If God loved you so much to die for you, then what is your response? It isn’t easy, but it is simple. No passwords or keycards. No IDs or special knowledge. Just truth. Grace is a gift, and we so often don’t believe that it is.

Image: Remember the sunset pictures from this post? When I turned around from taking the photo, the bank, which is mirrored, was reflecting the sunset. The image above is the sunset reflected in mirrors (which is why the sun is backwards).