Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W. February 8, 2011

Super Bowl commercials went for $3 million for thirty seconds.
It didn’t quite fit in our church budget this year. Maybe next year!
I assumed that since most of the commercials were pretty forgettable it was due to the fact that the $3 million price tag didn’t leave much left over for creativity and production. In the past there have been a few companies that have staked their whole existence to a commercial during the Super Bowl. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with tying my future to whether a lot of people watch thirty seconds or exit for more nachos, but it’s happened.
We’re a culture that seems to always be looking for the next big thing, or even “the next bigger thing.” Just stop at a Best Buy and go to the 3-D TV display. What is better than an LED TV mounted to my wall? TV in 3-D! (Meanwhile we still have our TV that sticks about four feet out from the wall. We thought we were cool when we bought it about four years ago. Now we kind of feel like we did when we still had a turntable for our records, but everyone else had moved on.)
The next bigger thing! It happens in “church world” just as much. Very few of us are content for the peace of God, because the peace of God sometimes means residing in the same place for a while. It we’re constantly looking for the next bigger thing we’re very willing to leave the closeness of God in the present.
In Luke 9 we read the story of “the Transfiguration” where Jesus has a meeting on top of a mountain with Moses and Elijah. Three of his disciples witness this, and it must have been an amazing sight. Peter, however, wanted to move on to the next bigger thing and he suggested to Jesus that they put up three shelters- three new church additions, if you will- to mark the moment and take it to the next level. At the end of verse 33 in the NIV there is a sentence that appears in parentheses. In talking about Peter’s suggestion it reads “He did not know what he was saying.” In looking at my life, it frequently can be said, “He did not know what he was doing.”
How often do we not engage in the moment of what we’re doing now because we’re looking to make it larger than large? We’re prone to move on instead of being moved. Sometimes the next bigger thing is to be still where we are.
And besides, what would I do with an extra four feet in the room where our TV is?

This entry was posted on February 9, 2011 at 12:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.