I love the Smoky Mountains. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. The beauty always inspires me to write something. This time, however, my inspiration didn’t come from the beautiful mountain setting, but from a touristy museum on the Gatlinburg strip.
Though we have visited it many times before, the museum had been completely remodeled. So we decided to check it out and see what was new.
Amongst all the shrunken heads and other oddities, we soon came upon a display of several different gods. There were ancient African gods, Buddha, and several others that I had no interest in. Later, one of my daughters and I were talking about the museum, and she sarcastically said, “I guess they couldn’t put anything about Our God in there, because He’s too offensive.”
I said, “You are right, many people are offended by Jesus--the One True God--but the biggest reason He’s not in there is because the museum is full of dead things. We serve the Living God, and you can’t place a Living God in a museum full of dead gods and other oddities. Only dead things belong there.”
I wonder how many times we tend to forget that we serve a Living God? We don’t have to rub a statue's belly for false promises of good luck or fortune, because the Living God cannot be carved out of wood or stone. He is ALIVE. He listens and speaks to us. He is with us and lives within us as Christians.
We don’t go to a museum to learn about Him, we have His Living Word—The Holy Bible—to teach us about Him. Even the Bible is alive and active! [Hebrews 4:12] His Word is unchanging, yet it still speaks into our modern everyday situations. Even the very absence of Our God in that museum attests to the fact that Our God is different. He is ALIVE. He is REAL.
I once heard the story of a man who told a preacher, “I don’t believe in your God, because I can’t go to his grave and find his body buried there. But, I can find Buddha’s grave and many other gods’ burial sites with their remains in them.”
The preacher looked at the man and said, “You will never find Jesus in a grave or a tomb because He AROSE. He is no longer dead, but RISEN and sits at the right hand of the Father!”
Some of you today might just need the reminder that we don’t serve a dead God. He is ALIVE. No matter what you are facing today He is listening. And He is fully able to do whatever we ask of Him. Nothing is impossible for Our Living God!
"But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and eternal King. The earth quakes at His wrath, and the nations cannot endure His indignation.” Jeremiah 10:10