Thank You Captain Obvious.

I read an article the other day about avoiding shark attacks and what to do if attacked (I really have no real useful reason for knowing said information, but I suppose it is better to have the knowledge and not need it, than to need it and not have it). After the detailed description of what to do in order to escape a hungry shark, I read this: “Australian scientists have discovered that swimming with another person decreases your chances of being attacked by 50%.” I would say so, and if I were swimming with 99 other people, I suspect my chances would be further reduced…just a hunch.

Funny how the obvious seems so hard to grasp at times…

How many times has it happened to you? You stand looking for something, maybe your keys, an important paper or the remote control, yet you just can’t find it. You search everywhere you can think of to look, then, stopping to think, you cast your eyes downward, and there, sitting before you, is the very thing you sought. It didn’t seem like it was there all the time, but it was.

I’ve heard married couples comment on this phenomenon when one has asked the other to retrieve something from the refrigerator. Standing there before the open door the husband, I’m told, usually speaks these words, “We have no ketchup.”

“Yes, we do. Look again.”

He peers longer into the shelves. “No, I don’t think we do. It’s not here.”

The wife, sighing, crosses the kitchen, slides the milk aside, and there, filled to the brim is a bottle of ketchup. “It wasn’t there earlier,” he says. It’s so obvious that you miss it.

It’s one thing to miss a container of tomato product because you aren’t paying attention, but it’s another to miss the God of the Universe because you are too busy with everything else that comes your way. And it’s not that God has hidden Himself away in some dark, inaccessible corner. To the contrary of that notion, He has revealed Himself to mankind. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Creation itself testifies of God’s existence (“His invisible attributes are clearly seen”), His work as the Creator (“being understood by the things that are made”), His “eternal power” and divine nature (“Godhead”). Creation screams out the name of God, yet we sometimes miss the most obvious message of all.

Sometimes, when I’m at the point that I feel like I’m missing something (or Someone) in my life, much of the time, it’s the Eternal God that I’m overlooking.

How obvious is He to you?
Dustin C. George
Minister to Single Adults
www.sevierheights.org/ministries/singles