I’ve been going through Genesis the past couple months reading and re-reading stories, choosing one Bible translation then switching to another. And regardless of how many times I’ve read the Genesis account, or all of Scripture for that matter, God always reveals new truths… even through those old stories we heard over and over again as kids.
This morning as I started reading through the story of The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), I had to laugh. You see, it took place after the great flood when all the people of the earth were all together and spoke one language. It was here that someone had a brilliant idea to construct a city with the greatest sky scraper ever; something everyone could see, an awesome achievement and focal point of the city, a wonder of the world…
“Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.'” Genesis 11:4
What’s so funny about that you ask? Well, it just struck me the gall of some people… doing something so outlandish, like building this massive tower, to make sure they wouldn’t be “dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Doesn’t that just sound like a dare? Yeah…what do you suppose God will do in this situation??!
A dear friend of mine has Trypanophobia. It’s not what I would think of as a typical fear most girls have like spiders or snakes… it’s the fear of injections or hypodermic needles.
She hates them.
She even had a discussion with God about them, acknowledging her fear but making sure He understood there was NO WAY she could deal with anything that had to do with needles…just don’t even go there.
Or, in other words…
Not too long after my friend had her ‘discussion’ with God, her daughter became very sick and was eventually diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Which means that the one thing which brought such trepidation to my needle fearing friend, is now the one thing she must have intimate knowledge of. She must keep them in her home, in her purse, at her side, in order to inject her daughter daily to provide the insulin her daughter needs to survive.
Like the people building that tower to make sure they wouldn’t be “dispersed,” God clearly had other plans.
“…the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth…” Genesis 11:8
Now don’t get me wrong, we can’t change or coerce God’s plan for our lives by sending out a dare… if that were the case, then my ‘don’t even try to let me win the lottery’ would have ended differently and we certainly won’t doom it by admitting our weakness or fears.
But it is God and God alone who is in control and He has a fantastic, yet sometimes difficult, way of teaching us that.
Don’t dare God. Let Him dare you. Admit you need Him in your life, to take control of it and work through it. It is only through our weaknesses; our addictions, our mistakes, our fears…that He can be seen most clearly.
I Spy God 