https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/20190317sermon.mp3
Texts: Genesis 15:1-6, 12-16; Luke 13:31-35
One of the comic strips that has rotated on and off my office bulletin board is from Opus. For the uninitiated, Opus is a large-beaked penguin in a world of humans, plus Bill the Cat. This particular strip is set outside in a grassy meadow. Opus and his young friends Oliver, Michael and Milo are sitting under a night sky. Opus begins by looking at the reader and saying: “I love these summer evening reality checks from Oliver.” Oliver, the intellectual of the bunch, takes it from there. Sitting by his telescope, Oliver says to the others: “Hold out a speck of sand at arm’s length…” The picture moves in tighter on the grain of sand he is holding up. Then we can see through it, revealing the piece of outer space that lies on the other side. Oliver says, “That’s the portion of the night sky at which they pointed the Hubble telescope for a week. It was there – deep within the dot of dark nothingness ten billion light years distant – that they found the unexpected: Galaxies! Thousands! Thousands! …with billions of stars…and trillions of new worlds. And beyond...