03 Sep Ice Cream Scoop Theology

So the Salt ‘n Light summer has ended. Most of you and most of our staff have returned to school. Textbooks, lockers, number two pencils and blue book tests await you each day. Ham and cheese sandwiches greet you at lunch where you probably sit at the same table with the same group of friends each 4th, 5th, or 6th period. Algebra problems are tricky or boring, homework snickers at you from your backpack, and procrastinating sounds like the most fun you’ll have all year. Life has normalized, routines have recycled, your days have found their tick-tock rhythm.

But your God is anything but routine. Sure, maybe be life feels ordinary but your God isn’t. He is waiting in every scheduled moment for you to notice the unscheduled thing, for you to recognize the burning bush in the alto section of the choir or the back of the lunch line. He’s calling your name at 7:14 am in homeroom and singing over you while you search for that encyclopedia in the library. Because our God loves to speak in those just getting by kind of minutes.

I know this because it happened to me. It happened to me in the frozen food section of the grocery store.

My two good friends, Bekah and CB (you may have heard of them), and I were scouring the local GIANT for some dessert after a perfect late summer dinner. Ice Cream was a definite possibility at this point and believe me, we assessed all of the options. Amidst our perusal, we came upon a device called, “the EASY SCOOP”.

The Easy Scoop was a REVOLUTIONARY new type of..ice cream scoop. It had a handle and two claw like sides that came together in the middle. It looked like something out of a bad syfy futuristic movie. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell you how it worked because I was too busy making fun of the fact that it existed.

“They are REALLY trying to re-invent the wheel on this one.” I laughed.

Why on earth would someone feel the need to create a new type of ice cream scoop? The one that has existed for, let’s say 100 years, has treated us very well, and I think serves it’s purpose efficiently. The Easy Scoop, in my humble opinion, is a sad sad attempt at altering something familiar VERY SLIGHTLY in hopes of convincing the populace that it’s better and more suited for the task.

AKA…A SCAM! I said. The Easy Scoop is a SCAM!

But later that night as I journaled, God brought to mind that easy scoop…and he started speaking to me about Redemption. Because if redemption is like scooping ice cream, God is way more about the easy scoop than I’d like to admit.

You know, I don’t know how God feels about the Easy Scoop itself, but I do know how he feels about healing broken things. And I know that he loves to invent new and creative ways to do the same thing..over and over and over again. The way he redeems one thing is completely different from the way heals another with a similar brokeness. The way he speaks to me will not always be the way he speaks to you. And that is so beautiful. Because he looks at each one of us and knows us deeply enough  that he can see exactly how redemption needs to happen for it to stick, to change, to re-create something in us. I don’t think it’s ever the same way twice, like he has some recipe book or a series of redemptive theorems he pulls from his Holy algebra book. I think God is so ridiculously creative that he is coming up with endless ways to restore and rebuild and renew every day.

So let’s get creative in our prayers. Let’s not just pray for the same old wheels to turn. Let’s dream of redemption in buckets and polygons and race cars and easy scoops.Let’s find God in our lunch boxes and lockers and pray that he blows through the curtains of our fall plays and cheers in the crowd at a Friday night football game. Write his truths in school papers and seek his face in mac labs and art studios. He’s there already and he wants to build something new with you, if you’re willing to push a little past normal.

Let’s start seeing redemption through bold and illustrative lenses.

Let’s fashion something beautiful alongside our creator.