New Hope Rising

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
"So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever."

My uncle was a bowler. I'm talkin' like Fred Flintstone here. He had his own bowling ball, bowling ball bag, and even his own bowling shoes. He would not be caught dead in those ugly red and green bowling shoes. No, he wore nice bowling shoes with comfortable soles and arch support.

My uncle was a bowler. I was a budding scientist. In science, you test hypotheses. At the age of five, I was watching some educational program--probably Mr. Roger's Neighborhood--in which they took a bowling ball and cut it in half with a band saw. They showed us that the center of a bowling ball was filled with cork. In an episode of Tennessee Tuxedo (the smart sounding penguin who was actually stupid with the dumb sounding walrus sidekick named Chumley who was actually smart) they escaped, yet again, from the zoo to go and see Mr. Whoopee. Mr. Whoopee had all of the answers to all of the questions. And he also had a magic chalkboard which would bring images to life. Whenever Tennessee and Chumley would go and see Mr. Whoopee, they would come prepared with a question and Mr. Whoopee would go and retrieve his chalkboard from his closet and begin to sketch their answer. Mr. Whoopee had a closet like Fibber McGee's. Every time our heroes would come with a question, Mr. Whoopee's closet would empty its contents out onto the seemingly unsuspecting Mr. Whoopee. In one episode, Tennessee and Chumley needed to know about directions. And so Mr. Whoopee explained to them the intricacies of North, South, East, and West and then told them about compasses. He told them they could make a homemade compass out of a cork and a needle. If you take the needle, and drop it on the floor, it will make it magnetic. Then you poke the needle through the cork and float the cork in a small cup of water. Cool, huh? I've tried it. It works. It's not the snappiest compass in the world, but if you're patient, you'll find North.

So, in my budding scientific brain, an hypothesis was forming: cork floats, bowling balls have cork centers, soooo...bowling balls will float!

The only way to discover if your hypothesis is a fact or reality, is to test it. So we did. I found my lab assistants, my three and four year old cousins, and we hijacked my uncle's bowling ball. My cousins lived on a small sloping hill which had a pond at the bottom of it. And it wasn't the kind of a pond which had a nice sloping shoreline. This pond dropped straight down almost ten feet (as I remember it...it was probably like three feet...but hey, I was five...seemed more like an ocean to me). Are you getting the picture of what came next? The bowling ball was pretty heavy for us little squirts. But you know, with the help of the hill and a little Newtonian force known as gravity, the ball was propelled easily into the murky waters of our oversized petri-dish. Thooooommp! The water hardly even splashed, so perfectly spherical was the glossy surface of the subject of our experiment. It was glorious. We danced around like natives after a kill. We reveled in the glory of the moment!

And then we realized something. The ball was not coming back up.

Words cannot fully express the feeling in that moment. Terror hints at it. We didn't really have a grasp on profanity yet. However, we did not really know such words and so we uttered a simple, but effective, "oops."

In that moment, my cousins looked at me as if I were a dead man. They knew the wrath of their father was going to descend. And they knew that it would not be upon them. They would let me suffer the consequences on my own. After all, it was my hypothesis, right? I tried to convince them that we were all a part of a team...a glorious team...which was working towards the betterment of humanity. They didn't buy it. They simply pointed their fingers at me as if to say "He did it." And fifteen minutes later, when we still did not see the bowling ball rising to the surface, that's exactly what they did when my aunt and mother came walking down the hill to see what we were up to. "He did it." {sigh} Such greatness of thought is always under appreciated.

My cousins had already given up on my hypothesis. And I'll admit, my hope was rapidly fading. But deep in my gut, I knew that if cork floated in small amounts, that it would certainly float in larger amounts and that while pigs may never fly, bowling balls indeed would float. Seemingly, everything was falling apart. The best laid plans...well, you know...the looks on our mothers' faces said it all. We were dead. They were going to end our lives.

But there was more here than meets the eye. Because deep within the murky depths of the pond, something was occurring. The principle of buoyancy was being applied. And the downward motion of the bowling ball had finally been reversed.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the bowling ball was rising to the surface of the pond! And as we were turning to go and receive our beatings, a small flicker of movement caught my eye. It could've been a frog or a small fish which was the source of the movement. But my heart said differently. My hope was renewed. A burst of energy surged within my body. My scientific hypothesis was about to be proven correct! Ha ha ha! A maniacal laugh spewed forth from my lips. And all gathered there upon that grassy hillside turned to see that which I was seeing.

The bowling ball was slowly rising to the surface! A cheer broke forth! My cousins were even a little excited. But secretly, I'm sure they were bummed that I was going to get out of this beating.

It took a week or so, but the bowling ball made it to the surface and was retrieved by the neighbors on the other side of the pond and then returned to my uncle. He received the bowling ball with a small tear glistening in the corner of his eye and said for the first time in history, "You complete me."

I was about to abandon hope. I was about to give up on that which I knew in my heart to be true. Everything on the outside of that situation said that things were falling apart. But on the inside of the pond, where I could not see, a new hope was rising.

We are all called to a personal ministry. Mine is to build up leaders within the church...to train and equip them for the ministry of reaching out to this world with the life-giving and life-saving Message of Jesus. What's your ministry? There are so many times when I've felt things falling apart around me. I've looked at attendance and seen it shrink. I've looked at our budget and seen ourselves lacking the funds to do the ministry to which we are called. I've looked in the eyes of a person who is so burned out on life and ministry that for personal health, they've needed to leave our ministry. In these moments, I've almost abandoned hope. There have been times when giving up seemed to me a viable option. Everything on the outside seemed to be falling apart. In those moments, I was not trusting in what God was doing on the inside where I could not see.

I wasn't trusting that cork floats, and so would the bowling ball of my ministry.

Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever said to God, "What's the point? Look, it's not going to float! Why are you having me wait around here for this ministry if we both know it's going to sink? Hello? God? Are You there?"

I'm quite certain in these moments that God is smiling that I-told-you-so kind of a smile. And with that smile upon His countenance, He utters two words to us: trust Me.

Notice that He did not say "trust you." He said "trust Me."

And there's the crux of this whole matter. When we trust in ourselves, we will come up wanting. We will turn away from the pond of life, thinking that our personal ministries to which we've been called have sunk and become wrecks upon the bottom of life's pond to be explored eons hence by archaeologists who will shake their heads and say, "Tsk tsk. It's too bad."

When we trust in God, we will wait at the water's edge with joyous expectancy, knowing that God is making New Life in and through our ministry on the inside, where we cannot see.

When the prodigal bowling ball surfaced and was returned to us, a celebration ensued! We whooped and yee-hawed. We had a celebration which greatly overshadowed the gloom of those moments when we thought all hope was lost. The hard times of the sunken bowling ball were small potatoes compared to the lavish celebration which was prepared for us when the bowling ball rose to the surface.

At this moment, you may be standing at the water's edge with joyous expectancy, knowing that God's working wonders on the inside. Or you may be about to turn away, abandoning hope. My friend, hang on. Don't go. Wait. Listen to the two words which God is speaking to you at this very moment: "Trust Me. I'm doing things on the inside which you can't even begin to imagine. But they are wondrous and will bring great joy. Your ministry may not be rising as fast as you'd like it to be rising. But it's rising as fast as I'd like it to be rising. So don't turn around. Don't go. Don't give up. You know I've called you to this ministry...so why would I let it fail? Do not let yourself be deceived by human standards of success. Your trust in My grace is all the success you'll ever need. Trust Me."

Now, if you're in a ministry to which you've not been called, the bowling ball may never resurface. Deal with it and move on. Listen for God's calling. Listen for the ministry which He has prepared especially for you. That ministry will always resurface. Maybe not as quickly as you'd like. But it will.

We had another hypothesis: bowling balls float, so wouldn't bowling shoes float as well?

Bowling shoes do not float. Trust me.

Be WILD For Christ!

Shane Burton