Timothy J. Smith

Object: A coin to flip.

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Hello, everyone! (Let them respond.) Are you ready for our story today? (Let them respond.) Great!  

Job 42:1-6, 10-17
God’s presence changed Job. George Bush was changed by faith from a party-boy alcoholic to a serious politician, a governor, and finally our president. Famed 20th-century Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin so powerfully expressed this awesomeness of God. He wrote:

In Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God, there’s a powerful scene where a father and his daughter are having an argument. She tells him that she’s going to go to Paris to live with her boyfriend. He won’t let her. Why would she want to do something like that?

“Because I’m afraid,” she says. 

“Afraid? Whatever are you afraid of?”

“God hates me,” Tim announced to the empty room. He picked up the baseball sitting next to his bed and tossed it in his hand. He had come all this way to play ball. This was his dream. He had worked hard, he had trained, he had done everything his coach said he needed to do.

Those who think they can see everything are often the ones who are really blind! The bystanders in this gospel story had far less insight and vision than Bartimaeus, who knew that the most important thing in the world was to get to Jesus. The bystanders didn't have that same priority, and did their best to stop Bartimaeus from achieving his burning desire.

This is a story about Greg and his friends, who discover they can't "see" quite as well as they thought.

It was Greg's birthday party, but he was utterly fed up. He'd been

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,

Heads bowed, hands clasped, the words are spoken softly and gently. A prayer is lifted up for this need, for that person, for those in trouble or affliction. There is need, want, despair -- for someone or for many. A hope is voiced that God will intervene, help, safeguard, or assist. Then, with these needs and wants laid before God, the prayer ends, "In Jesus' name we pray. Amen." That's it; that's the assurance that God will hear us, for this prayer is being offered in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the one interceding for us before the throne of God.

Playwright Neil Simon has written a comedy, God's Favorite, based on a contemporary Job, a tycoon whom Simon names "Joe Benjamin" or "Joe B." for short. The setting is Long Island, where Joe B. lives in a nineteen-room mansion with his wife, a prodigal son, and a pair of kooky twins. The family's assets include priceless paintings, irreplaceable antiques, including a Gutenberg Bible, half a million dollars in jewelry, swimming pools, and domestic servants.

When six nations of eastern Europe were freed from the domination of totalitarian Communism in 1989, there was wild celebration by the people in the streets. They sang, they shouted, they marched, they danced in the streets, they laughed, they hugged each other. This was the happiest time of their lives. They were freed from decades of living under uncompromising dictatorships. Now they could speak out openly about how they felt, and they could march and shout their protests to a hated regime. It was a celebration the like of which they had never before experienced.

A cigar-chomping realtor was driving around a young couple to search for their first dream house. After listening to their concerns about mortgage points, maintenance costs, and school systems, he decided to give them a bit of advice. "I've been selling homes for 23 years," he said, "and I've discovered only three things matter when you're buying a home: location, location, location."