In case you have missed a part of the social media bandwagon, pictures of brooms standing on end have been appearing all over the place. Even saw a Christian message board go nuts at the phenomena—it must be a sign of something. Popular explanation—Jupiter, Venus, and Earth are all in some sort of crazy gravitational alignment.
My church custodian and I would like to see your broom, and raise you four brooms, a dust mop, and a dustpan:
Is it nary but a sign of the closing of the age? Brooms standing on end, dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria! With this harbinger, I have decided Dave Miller is right, I am becoming a dispensational, pre-mil, pre-tribber!
Okay, enough of the crazy talk…
Anywho, this is what happens whenever you take a pastor who has had a very long week, combine him with a 21-year-old church custodian, and the two get their hands on as many brooms as they can find. We also tried a shovel, almost got it but the sharp edge won out.
But it is amazing to see some of the reaction on the internet to what amounts to nothing more than a simple balancing act. I have a book on my shelf by Michael Shermer of Skeptic Society/magazine fame, entitled Why People Believe Weird Things. Granted, Shermer would lump us Christian types in to the scope of his book…but we can still nonetheless agree with his premise. This world is full of people who believe weird things.
Paul even had something to say about that, “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:18-19).
Ultimately, in the grand scheme of Truth, weird things are those things that are not associated with Christ. Weird things lead to hell.
We can argue with passion about all our little pet doctrines, thoughts, traditions, etc. And we do a good job at that. But why not instead spend that energy meditating on scriptures like Isaiah 6. What we truly, madly, desperately need is our eyes focused on the glory of God…the one who will fill the earth with his glory.
We need our eyes focused on the one who shakes the foundations of the threshold with his voice, on the one who causes us to cry out “Woe is me!” yet find our guilt taken away and our sin atoned for.
We need our eyes focused on the one who sends us to preach to the masses, even the stubborn of heart, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant.”
If we had that focus as individuals and as churches, then it wouldn’t much matter what we call ourselves, or who was on an oversight panel of Sunday School material, or who wrote what in some state convention paper, or if brooms stand on end…
…for the world would be left with no excuse to believe weird things and the Truth would shine brightly, piercing through the darkness.