{"id":262,"date":"2023-09-13T19:51:27","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T19:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/2023\/09\/12\/gods-ridiculous-ways\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T20:16:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:16:01","slug":"gods-ridiculous-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/gods-ridiculous-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"God’s Ridiculous Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt like I had it all together \u2014 and friends, I have been trying<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a pile of stuff in my office that I meant to get to last summer<\/em>.  I still don\u2019t have regular prayer habits. I recently re-started leaving piles of clothes on the bed like I did when I was sixteen, and I really wish I\u2019d quit that. Oh, and then there\u2019s whatever destabilizing things are going on internally at the moment: from anxiety to distraction to just forgetting things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy for me to start thinking: I could do so much more for God if I could just conquer all these things!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight at the Celebrate! worship service, we\u2019ll be reading part of the story of Abraham and Sarah \u2014 a story that is foundational for three major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It\u2019s the story of God promising to make Abraham and Sarah the parents of nations and nations of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God has made this promise to Abraham before (in Gen. 15:1-6<\/em>), when Abraham was already in his eighties and Sarah in her seventies, and they had no children. They must have assumed, given the conditions, that God\u2019s promised child would need to come to them through unusual means \u2014 or maybe they just got impatient. Sarah asks that Abraham father a child with her slave, Hagar. He does, and Ishmael is born. But this was not the child God had been talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so we come to tonight\u2019s reading (Genesis 18:1-14, 21:1-7)<\/em>. Three heavenly messengers again promise \u201cyour wife Sarah will have a son.\u201d And Sarah laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The promise is something to laugh at. By now Abraham was in his nineties, Sarah in her eighties. If we were to make a movie of a couple like that having a child, it\u2019d probably be a comedy \u2014 or at least something with the strange vibes of Benjamin Button<\/em>. No wonder Sarah laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But working through things we find ridiculous to make miracles happen is one of God\u2019s favorite bits. An opposing army sends out a giant of man to be their champion warrior, and to fight him God sends a pre-teen who doesn\u2019t even know how to wear armor (1 Sam. 17)<\/em>.  God needs someone to stand strong against the pharaoh, and God sends a man who makes every excuse that he can\u2019t possibly do it (Exodus 3)<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the great story of Jesus fits the mold: a savior who gets executed before he really \u201cdoes anything\u201d? People mock him while he hangs on the cross. St. Paul hits it on the nose when he says: \u201cwe proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles\u2026\u201d (1 Cor. 1:23)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, this is how God does things. By ways that look foolish. Through people who are fearful, incompetent, even unfaithful. Through fools and sinners, God works wonders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does God work this way? It\u2019s one of the great and beautiful mysteries of who God is. But perhaps one reason is that it is for our own benefit. When God works through the ridiculous, we can only acknowledge that it is divine power at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of the story of Abraham and Sarah. If God had promised a child to a young, fertile couple, and then they\u2019d conceived and delivered in nine months \u2014 how different would the impact of the story be? Instead, God chose to work through a couple who could not have had a baby without a miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It shows how in-charge and powerful God is. It shows that God is faithful to God\u2019s promises. It shows that it\u2019s not all up to us and our trying \u2014 God is here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As St. Paul wrote: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The Lord] said to me, \u2018My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.\u2019 So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.\u201d (2 Cor. 12:9-10)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The witness of the scriptures is clear on this: God doesn\u2019t expect us to have it all together. God isn\u2019t telling us to be more so we can do more for God. No \u2014 instead, God makes us a promise: that God loves us and calls us just as we are. That God works in us and through us just as we are. It\u2019s God\u2019s power and perfection that matters, not ours. God only asks us to trust and to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So take a deep breath, and find your rest in God\u2019s power within your weakness. And know that if you don\u2019t have it all together \u2014 you\u2019re exactly the kind of person God is looking for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Pastor Kate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rev. Katherine Museu<\/a>s<\/em> and Rev. James A. Wetzstein<\/a> serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt like I had it all together \u2014 and friends, I have been trying.  There\u2019s a pile of stuff in my office that I meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-katherine-museus","category-csl-newsletter-devotionals"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"dev@eridesign.com","author_link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/author\/deveridesign-com\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2023\/09\/Lives-Rooted-in-Rest-2-300x251.webp","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Katherine Museus<\/a>","CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Katherine Museus<\/span>","CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 3 years ago","modified":"Updated 1 year ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 13, 2023","modified":"Updated on August 18, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 13, 2023 7:51 pm","modified":"Updated on August 18, 2025 8:16 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}