Just a few days ago, my two youngest children decided to be superheroes.
They saw no reason why they should be limited by gravity and human physical limitations. All they needed to overcome physics were beach towels. They came running up to me, towels in hand, and asked me to secure the towels around their necks. They had already tried stuffing the towels in their collars, but the towels-turned-capes kept falling out. And we all know that a superhero cannot have his cape falling out in mid flight.
The kids then spent the entire rest of the afternoon running with lightning speed back and forth across the yard. I kid you not, they believed they were flying. They kept yelling into the house, “Look, Dad! We’re flying!”
Reality? Reality is that they weren’t really flying. It was more like skipping added to jumping with some uncoordinated arm flailing mixed in for effect. No flying. But I had a blast watching them try, and I was really impressed with the attempt. I would never have the guts to try such a thing. Not in a million years.
Isn’t this how it is with God?
Faith is the one thing that we can do to please God. Nothing else will. It moves mountains because it moves God. I think faith is tied to our imagination – our willingness to dream divine dreams about what might be possible with God. But it doesn’t end with imagination. We’ve got to move. We have to put the cape on, get out in the yard and flap our arms like idiots. It’s not really faith until someone is running around like a fool with a cape in the front yard.
What I think we forget is that even when we are only getting 2 inches above the ground, our Father is delighting in the game. What’s different, however, is that with God He comes out in the yard with us and actually makes us fly — not as superheroes with all the power, but as the laughing children of a Father that uses the universe like a plaything.
Even when we look around and realize that we aren’t flying the way we dreamed, we are still bringing our Father joy and glory which is reason enough to keep flapping in the wind.
