This week I heard a story about a woman who learned a valuable life lesson while on a roller coaster.
She and her friend were at a park that had one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in the country, and her friend suggested they ride it.
Now our heroine was not a ride kind of person.
She didn't find the twist and turns of a roller coaster thrilling.
She wasn't exhilarated by the drive up, up, up, the long track, unable to see the way down until the whoosh of the descent made her heart catch in her throat.
For some people that was fun. For her, it was terrifying.
But her friend was the persistent type,
and so she agreed to go on the ride.
She stood in the line, listening to the screaming of the riders, and as she got closer and closer to gaining entrance, her heart pounded a bit more,
and her hands clenched a little harder.
Finally she was in the cart, ready to go, eyes closed, hands gripping the bar in white-knuckle terror, awaiting the worst to happen….
And in that moment, she had an epiphany.
Yes, an epiphany - you know, those times when suddenly the light bulb goes on in your brain, and you see things you never saw before.
She understood that in facing this roller coaster, she was learning a lesson for facing life.
One could either white-knuckle one's way through life, and carry the tension and stress of this moment with one through every trying or worrisome situation;
or one could let go - take a deep breath, lean on something bigger than oneself, and trust that things would be okay.
Today we are confronted with the stories of two men who made similar choices.
Faced with difficult - fearful, or despairing circumstances,
these men were prompted to choose something other than their white-knuckle reactions.
In a moment of revelation, or epiphany, they chose a different path.
The first is the story of Gideon, the youngest member of the smallest family in the not-very-important tribe of Manassah.
How's that for a pedigree?
And apparently Gideon felt his smallness, his inability to deal with life's challenges.
In a time of fear in Israel, when the people were being oppressed by the larger nation of Midian,
Their store of wheat and grain, and other food supplies were hidden away in caves so that the Midianites wouldn't find them.
Gideon, carrying out this secret agenda, was threshing the hidden wheat in a place where the Midianites weren't likely to look -
- in a winepress.
Gideon may have seen himself as least,
But God saw something different.
And he sent his messenger to Gideon - and in spite of Gideon's protests, the messenger told him that he had a plan - that Gideon, this least of the least, would be the one to lead his people to victory over the Midianites.
Confronted by a messenger from God, Gideon had to make a choice - the old, white-knuckle way, or the new way of letting go - and letting God lead him into a new path.
In Luke, we have the call of Peter and his partners, James and John.
Jesus, always resourceful, took advantage of the fact that the shoreline of the lake created a natural amphitheatre, perfect for a speaker standing out in the water.
So he asked Peter to take him out in the boat, and having done his teaching, he asked Peter to take the boat out for fish.
It was the last thing Peter wanted to do. He was tired, and discouraged after a night in which not a fish was caught.
Anyone who has owned his own business can identify with what Peter and the others were going through.
Wages and expenses to pay. No product, no income.
It was a time of high anxiety.
But Peter reluctantly did as Jesus asked, and took the boat out again.
Even though he knew that the fish were even less likely to bite during the day.
But instead of the discouragement Peter expected to find,
He found instead a miraculous grace, as not only his but also James' & John's boat were filled to beyond capacity.
In that moment, Peter discovered what Gideon had found - that God's plan is not dependent upon our own ability or inability - only upon our willingness to surrender to the Divine.
He, as a sinful man, had nothing to offer this God- man who stood upon his deck.
But Jesus saw beyond the sinfulness, the disbelief, and the weariness, to see a man who would later lead his fledgling church.
And Peter, like Gideon, made a choice.
Peter didn't' know what he was getting in to. But he did know what he had to give up. He gave up a way of life that was all he had ever known -
- a business, a partnership, and a love for the sea.
- But he recognized that something greater than himself was at work in his life, and he said yes to the One who ruled the very waves he loved.
- None of us know where the path God chooses will take us - Perhaps we, like Gideon or Peter, wonder why God would even call us in the first place.
But the fact is, we are all called to do God's work in one capacity or another. The first call came with our baptism, and most of us still struggle to live according to the words of its covenant.
Yet perhaps in the story of Gideon and Peter, we can find hope - that living the call of God doesn't depend on who we are or what we are capable of. It depends on God's grace, and on our ability to recognize our need of it.
For if you think about it, the moral of these three stories could be summed up pretty well in the five familiar words we say each time we say the words of the Baptismal covenant:
I will….
With God's help.
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