Monday, 27 June 2011

• What Is Your Excuse?

  "Who am I? Just a youth, when has that become the excuse?"

  Bethany Dillon sings those words from her eponymous debut album. She was only fourteen when she released that album in 2004--there is something meaningfully relevant behind the words. These words which come from someone who had their independent album end up in the hands of EMI executive Brad O’Donnell, which subsequently launched her career. Something that was so unexpected that many dream of.

  I don't know how she came to that place, but only through God’s grace. Thrust onto a platform where she had the means to speak on such a large audience, but I am sure that she cannot help to think of what large expectation that entails. 

  Yet, the results of following (though these are not objective means of determining success) resulted in several hit singles, multiple Dove nods, critical acclaim, and an exponentially increasing grassroots fan base that is both loyal and encouraging. Now she is aged at 22, with 4 studio albums, and married with one child--I cannot imagine anything else being more blessed.

  ==

  "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”" Genesis 17:17 (English Standard Version)

  God had just promised Abraham a child, not only that, but through this child, he would have offspring that numbered among the stars. Abraham was 99 years old when God came to him and told him of this news. I don’t blame the scepticism that Abraham had, that he and his wife would bear a child in their old age. Most women approach menopause a good 30 years before they turn 90, at most.

  Yet, this was something amazing in itself, that God would reveal Himself to any one man, and not only to any other man within the world, let alone any man at all. To Abraham of Haran, God came and told him that He would prosper him, and give him a mighty nation. And, God surely did follow up on his word, He remembered them. His wife, Sarai, bore a child named Isaac who was part of a lineage leading to Jesus Christ, king of many nations. Today, Abraham is the forefather of our faith, we are His children, we are His nation and we are His stars that he looked up at night and was in wonder at.

  ==

  "But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?...but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’”" Exodus 3:11, 4:1 (English Standard Version)

  God called Moses to go and proclaim an end to the oppression of the Egyptians on God’s chosen Israel. To go and talk to the Pharoah was his mission, his own household. A place where he had been brought up and nurtured after being found floating in a basket in the reeds at a young age.

  Blaming his lack of a voice seems to betray a larger unease at this large calling that God had come to him through. God was speaking through a burning bush, one that did not burn up! What natural phenomenon must this be--this act which yields such impossibility is this? And, what impossibility lies in the task that he is faced with, who would believe his words? A crazy action is what was demanded of Moses, he must have been seen either as mad, having inhaled too much desert air. And even worse, he had escaped from Egypt as a criminal after killing a guard.

  Yet through God, Moses led the people out of Egypt. Through the triumph of God's works over the lesser Egyptian magicians, they walked out. Even when the horse-drawn chariots came pursuing them, they died--crashing in the closing waters of the Red Sea. He was the instrument of God, finely tuned to play the tune of God’s victory over a myriad of adversity.

   

  "...Dreaming all the time, it’s so foolish!

  Your flood of empty word/will drown you in ruin

  So we listen, should we listen?

   

  Come with me, they’ll call us revolutionaries."

   

  What is stopping you?

  
  

  Image Source Image Source Image Source

  • 12:35 PM
  • 969 Views
  • 10 eProps
  • 4 Comments