02-04-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
February 4, 2025
After ten days of feeling sort of bad (and 48 hours of feeling really, really bad), I am feeling a bit closer to normal. Still a little cough, but not bad. Of course, as I type the word “normal,” it makes me wonder what constitutes normalcy. This has me pondering Abby Normal from the movie Young Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein has the classic line, “Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long 54-inch wide gorilla? Is that what you’re telling me?” I’m sure there are medical definitions of abnormal, but I sort of wonder if we all are abnormal, yet most of us are trying our best to appear like some mythical definition of normal. When the Apostle Paul wrote about the Body of Christ, and specifically the unique gifts each person brings, he mentioned how the foot might say, “I'm not a hand, and so I'm not part of the body.” Our spiritual gifts look different, but equally important, our life experiences shape how we put the gift to use. A person’s quirky sense of humor or strange way of looking at some particular aspect of life helps animate the spiritual gift in a way that it appears a bit eccentric, yet it might just be exactly what God needs for one very important situation. Instead, we have this tendency to reach for the ordinary and bland in our search for normal. When in fact, the Spirit is often the one giving energy to the distinctiveness within us all.

There is something within us that fears being different, yet we need to trust you, God of the immeasurable peculiarities of life. Maybe the weirdness that I have tried to hide is the beautiful uniqueness you put within me. Give me the encouragement I need to be me. Amen.