I’m a child of the TV sitcom. From Hogan’s Heroes, from The Partridge Family to Happy Days, I grew up watching and loving these 30-minute comedic TV shows. One of the residual gifts of watching many hours of these shows is that I can sing most of these shows theme songs from memory. Did you know you can sing the Lord’s prayer to the theme song of Gilligan’s island?
And then there’s the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies. A poor man named Jed, barely kept his family fed. One day he was shooting at some food, and out from the ground came bubbling crude. Next thing you know old Jed’s a millionaire.
For decades Jed eked out a living, caring for Granny (Daisy Moses), Elly Mae and Jethro. All the while, he was living on top of “black gold, Texas tea.” Jed was an oil billionaire and he didn’t even know it.
Too many of us are like that. We tend to live in spiritual poverty when just beneath the surface there are untold riches yet to be discovered, utilized and enjoyed.
In this same note, nineteenth century theologian Soren Kierkegaard once shared a story about a town where only ducks lived. Every Sunday the ducks waddled out of their duck homes down Main Street to their duck church. They waddled into their proper place in their duck pews. In waddled the duck choir followed by the duck minister who opened the duck Bible and started preaching. He said, "Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings! God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!"
In response all the ducks shouted "Amen! Hallelujah! Preach it!" Then they all waddled out of their duck church, back down Main Street to their duck homes, until the next Sunday when they repeated the whole cycle.
Followers of Jesus have the opportunity to live life at a different altitude. Understand that God has given us wings! “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.”(Romans 8:1 NLT)
Let that sink in for a moment! The very same power, the Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead that first Easter morning, resides in us! The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, lives within us.
We’re not made to simply waddle through life in the dust or to flap through life instead of flying. God created us to soar.
“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:20 NIV).
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