The Position is Taken

You may find this hard to believe, but there are many decisions made in this world where no one, and I mean no one, bothered to check with me first. I mean there are several nights that there really isn't anything interesting on television and other nights there are multiple shows all on at the same time.  I could halo them with that if they only asked.  Our state legislature could use my help.  There are any number of laws that should pass that don't and other laws that do pass but shouldn't.  And of course the Tigers bullpen is in serious need of my advice.  I wonder why no one asks.

Most of us have strong opinions about something.  There's that table in the corner of the restaraunt where the old guys meet each day.  Most coaches hear a lot of suggestions about who to play when and where and for how long.  And those are the comments that they hear.  Often other people's thought processes make no sense.  It's hard to remember that just because our decisions would have been different, does not mean that they would be better.

And if people don't make sense, it's even harder to wrap our head around what God is thinking.  Why would God pick Moses, who stuttered, to go and talk to Pharaoh?  Why would God have picked Joan of Arc, a teenage peasant girl, to lead an army.  Why?  I'm sure that I wouldn't have made those decisions.

And so we come to the Christmas story.  Watch this clip from Pastor Mike.

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God is in the habit of using ordinary people for extraordinary purposes.  Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi they all seem like an unlikely cast.  But in the mix of it, they story works.  The disciples were an unlikely group that formed the basis of the new way.  David was an unlikely hero defeating Goliath and an even more unlikely king, but God makes the improbably look like the obvious choice.

There was a movie about the creation of the first atomic bomb called, "Fat Man and Little Boy".  It stars Paul Newman as General Leslie Groves.  At one point in the movie a doctor is talking with Robert Oppenheimer and says to him the line..

"Stop playing God Oppenheimer.  You're not good at it, and the position is taken."

I think that we would all do good to remember that advice.  God is God.  We are not.  The position is taken.