1 Samuel 10:22
So they inquired further of the Lord, “Has the man come here yet?” And the Lord said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggage.”

In case you haven’t noticed, airlines charge for almost any baggage now. They charge for the first checked luggage, then the second, now some may even charge for the carry-on. Won’t be long now and they’ll say that both of our arms are carry-ons and they’ll charge for that, too. I guess then we really would be paying an arm and a leg, huh? At any rate, the point here is that baggage has always come with a fee, even long before the airlines tried to capitalize on it. In fact, Saul almost paid the most expensive baggage fee in history.

A little background on our passage may help set the stage for the verse above. By the time we get to this point, Israel has decided that God needs some help with his country and has asked for a king, Saul has been anointed as that first king, and his coronation ceremony is in full swing. Samuel has just gotten up in front of the crowd and has introduced King Saul to his country. As the praise team hit the highest point of musical energy, Samuel proclaimed, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Here’s…your…King…SAUL!!!!” The spotlights probably went crazy, darting in and out and around the crowd, before finally coming to rest on the entrance where Saul should have been standing and taking in all the applause. Everything was perfect, except for the fact that Saul wasn’t there.

Naturally, this raised a few questions. Most noticeably, “Where’s the king??” And that is where our verse picks up the story. The people asked God if Saul had even shown up yet, and the Lord’s response was that the freshly anointed king – the man who stood head and shoulders above anyone else in the nation – had indeed come, but was now cowering in the baggage.

We could get into all kinds of discussions about whether or not it was the perfect will of God for Israel to even have a king (umm, it wasn’t), but let’s at least admit that Saul was most definitely God’s choice to be the first one. In fact, 1 Samuel 10:1 said that Saul had been anointed over the Lord’s own inheritance! That is a high calling, and yet even after countless events that could only be explained as God confirming His hand on Saul, the man who would be king is hidden in the baggage, hesitant to take his place in God’s plan.

Now that is a high baggage fee, and if we’re not careful, we’ll pay it, too. Our baggage continually haunts us and taunts us, trying to convince us that we’re not ready for the very place in God’s plan that He has prepared us for (Ephesians 2:10). I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of paying such a high price for carrying my baggage, and instead of looking around for another airline, I think maybe leaving the baggage behind and trusting God on the flight is my best option.

Finally, I’m truly free to move about the country, and I don’t even need Southwest Airlines to take me there. Want to come along?

John 11:39
Jesus said, “Move the stone away.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “But, Lord, it has been four days since he died. There will be a bad smell.” (NCV)

I have an ugly yard. I guess I can say that and not hurt anyone’s feelings because I’m the guy who takes care of it (and I use that phrase loosely). Our yard is the final resting place for the bad plants, kind of like The Green Mile except that, well, there’s not a lot of green. Bushes last only a few seasons, there are rocks embedded in the lawn, and the only things that seem to flourish are weeds. It is, as I said, ugly.

But every now and then I look at my yard and see beauty. Typically it happens once a year, on the day of the first mowing of the season. I start with a yard full of sticks and leftover leaves from the fall and end with a yard that is clean and a little more green than the brown it was before I mowed. I edge and trim it and then blow the clippings away and it always strikes me how much just cleaning away the junk can make even my ugly yard look good.

Our faith is like that, and Easter is the perfect reminder of it. We spend so much effort and energy trying to keep covered up what we feel is ugly, and yet our Lord knows that the first step towards beauty is the uncovering of the ugly. Martha knew that, and tried to warn Jesus that moving the stone would release a bad smell, but Jesus wasn’t buying it. If He really is the resurrection and the life, then not only can He bring life where there was death, but He can handle all the old smells that try to linger around, too. He told Martha that if she truly believed, she would see the glory of God.

What shows His glory? The dead live, the old is new, and there is no longer any hint of the previous ugly condition. Hope springs eternal and in a moment, the uncovering of what we fear is the most ugly gives way to a beauty and a hope that we could never have imagined.

On this Resurrection Day, know that He has uncovered the myth behind the enemy’s greatest tactic: the ugliness of death is no longer to be feared because even in that, our Lord brings life. He is the victor, and finally, I am made new.

Now, if I could just sprinkle some of that on my lawn…

Exodus 3:3-4
So he said, “I will go closer to this strange thing. How can a bush continue burning without burning up?” When the Lord saw Moses was coming to look at the bush, God called to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”

There are a bazillion types of bushes. Tall ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones, the kind with 2 birds in them and the kind that rule over the free world – twice. Bushes aren’t rare, and that was surely the case on the backside of the desert for Moses. But one that burns and is never burned up? Now that was enough to catch his attention, and typically that’s what we teach about from this passage. Preacher man gets up and says that God called Moses from within a burning bush to go and deliver His people from slavery and we all shout, “Amen!” After all, that is what the story says, right?

Well, yes. I was trying to build this dramatic pause, but the truth is that the passage says exactly what the preacher man preaches. Of course, if you look at that burning bush from a different angle, I think you might see another question in it, one that made me squirm a bit when I heard God ask it. Ready?

{There’s that dramatic pause I was looking for.}

Here it is: if God got Moses’ attention by burning a bush so that He could call Moses to something great, how do you suppose He plans on getting the attention of others around you so He can call them to something great? That’s right. He’s planning on burning you up, too. While I was reading this passage earlier, I had to ask myself if people ever saw my life burning for Christ and felt compelled to mover closer to investigate? Ouch.

The challenge for us all, then, is to become “this strange thing” that God uses to call the world to Himself. He has a plan for them all, and it begins with a fire that burns us up. Like the guys in National Treasure lighting a torch to find their way in the cave, am I willing to be the flame that helps others around me see Him more clearly? On my worst days, I want no part of that plan, but on my best days, I think my answer is that I hope so. I hope that He finds me willing to sit on the backside of the desert waiting for the time that He strikes the match and throws it on me. If I am patient, it will be the perfect time – the time that God deems most profitable for His purpose and glory.

Scary? Sure. But at least I know who holds the match, and if I trust Him, it makes all the difference. I can trust that He knows when to burn me and that I won’t be totally destroyed in the process. In fact, my life will serve it’s purpose by providing what others need to find theirs. I’ll be the fire that they sing around as they make s’mores, and isn’t that what Paul meant when he said that he was being poured out like a drink offering? Sure it was.

So light the fire, Lord, people around us have destinies to discover, callings to fulfill, and…

…marshmallows to roast.