And all of us would be able to
share a story of a memorable summer vacation. Stories of summer camp, mission
trips, and family reunions. Stories of trips to baseball games and visits to
grandma and grandpa. Stories of a first airplane flight; stories of a cramped
ride in a car filled to capacity with camping equipment. Stories about
vacations that you wished never would end and stories about vacations that you
wished would have ended sooner. That story about a memorable summer vacation
that popped into your mind as I have been speaking. That story that still comes
up in conversation with relatives and family members.
Now, for all of us whose story
about a memorable summer vacation involved a trip in an automobile, here’s what
I know about your story. Even though I have never heard your story, here’s what
I know about your story, because here’s what I know about my story about a
memorable summer vacation that involved a trip in an automobile. What I know
about your story and my story is that somewhere in the middle of the story a
question was asked by someone. And we all know what that question was, don’t
we? We could all say it out loud together, couldn’t we? At some point in all of
our stories, someone asked the question “are we there yet? How much longer? Are
we there yet?” Do you remember how long those trips seemed to take as a child?
And what was all the more
frustrating as a child; what was all the more irritating as an adult, is when
there was road construction. Have you been there? Because when there is road
construction, traffic comes to a crawl. When there is road construction,
whether you had a car growing up that had 4 x 75 air conditioning, which was 4
windows down at 75 miles an hour, or whether you had air conditioning as
standard equipment on your car, air conditioning does not work as well when a
car is crawling through construction. Temperatures rise, patience gets short,
and then comes the question “How much longer?” Have you been there?
And what could complicate
things all the more would be if there was a detour. You know the detour sign;
that orange sign that would have an arrow pointing you to take some back road
off the main highway. And once on that back road you often quickly had no idea
where you were at and no idea where the road was taking you. And you would find
yourself hoping and praying that there was a sign that would point you back in
the right direction.
And the further the detour took
you off track, the more frustrated you became. You began to feel like the
detour sign should have looked like this. Temperatures rise, patience gets
short, and then comes the question “How much longer?” Have you been there? Off
track. Lost. Frustrated. Confused. Responding in a way that dishonors others?
Have you been there
spiritually? Have you been at the place in your life where you traveling in
relationship with God and decided to take a detour? And once you took that
detour you soon found yourself at a place where you had no idea where you were
at and no idea where the road you were on was taking you? Temperatures rise,
patience gets short, and then comes the question “How much longer?” Have you
been there? Off track. Lost. Frustrated. Confused. Responding in a way that
dishonors others?
As we enter into the summer
travel season, I would like for us to spend our summer discovering that the
detours that we can find ourselves taking as followers of Jesus are not new
detours; these detours have been around for thousands of years. As a matter of
fact, there is a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book
of Malachi that records the many detours that the Jewish people decided to take
instead of living in relationship with God.
To fully understand the
timeless nature of these detours, however, we first need to understand the
context in which the book of Malachi was written. Tomorrow, we will look at
that context and the beginning of the book…
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