Papa Please

I know it's the wrong season to be talking about fishing, but an image came to me today as I was preaching on Luke 20:27-40 where a snarled, tangled family situation is described.  When I was a kid I learned to cast with a fishing reel a lot like the one pictured -- and it would get snarled and tangled fairly often.  And I thought of knotted and tangled shoe laces.  I'd try to undo them but, when I was small, I had to bring them to mom or dad and ask for help. 

Knotty situations and snarled relationships abound in our world because of sin.  Sin, as it's described in the LBW's order for marriage is "our age old rebellion" by which "the gladness" of God's gift "can be overcast and the gift of family can be come a burden."  In Luke 20:27-40 a situation is described where seven brothers each marry the same woman in succession, one after another dies and one after another each brother marries her.  The story is told to trip Jesus up, to trap him by describing a problem that can't be unraveled--even by God.  These opponents of Jesus believe there is no unsnarling this.  They think it's best to just accept the reality and realize that even God can't make it all okay--better just to die.

Jesus' Father, however, the one he encourages us to call "Abba" (like "Papa" or "Daddy"), He does all things well.  There is no snarl too complicated for Papa God to fix.  If in this world there's no way, God makes a way in the new world.  "In the resurrection," says Jesus, we "neither marry nor are given in marriage."  When we trust in Him the time will come when we will be clearly and obviously "like angels and sons of God" -- newly born again in the resurrection of the dead.  The time will come when all will be well, even the worst and most tangled of individual and family stories.  What an excellent thing.

I believe God wants to break into our world today with that hope--and with little or BIG signs of his untangling love.  Let's ask our Papa God to come and untangle the mess we've made of our lives.  Let Papa God go to work granting forgiveness and new beginnings where we believe all is lost.

Is your family or your life... or your church... is it all a snarled, tangled mess today?  Don't give up.  Papa God will help.  Bring your request to Him.

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