His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth. – Job 41:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 20, 2012): Job 41

One of the little rituals that my wife and I have is that every Saturday Night we sit down and eat our supper and watch the BBC series – “Merlin.” Merlin is a show of fantasy. The opening voiceover every week reminds the watcher that what they are about to watch is nothing but someone’s imagination. We can argue about whether there is any truth to be found in the Arthurian legend – we can try to draw historical parallels between Camelot and real empires that existed during the first Millennium of the Common Era – but “Merlin” doesn’t embrace any of that. It doesn’t matter that the Castle and armor of the knights are from a later period. Merlin tells a tale of the imagination. This is what the dragon reminds the watcher of every week as he opens the show. “In a land of myth, and a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young boy. His name... Merlin.”

The character of Merlin belongs to a time when the unknowns of life dominated the human consciousness. Some things just couldn’t be explained. And our response to the unexplainable was to invent things that we thought explained what it was that we couldn’t explain. Magic and spells (and the ever present evil eye) were part of our response. And we also created creatures born out of our imaginations – they became the creatures of magic and sorcery. And one of these creatures was the dragon (and the modern day equivalent of the dragon is the UFO – or maybe President Obama.) But dragons only live in our imaginations.

A dragon is often perceived as a flying reptile like creature of great strength and often an animal that breathed fire. And the dream was that one day we would find the dragon master that could tame the dragon, and then everything would be okay. Merlin was a dragon master; he was a man that had great magical power but more importantly he had the power to tame the dragon. And when you can tame a dragon, nothing else is really needed.

God starts off talking to Job about a creature that resembles a crocodile, but by the end of God’s description the creature has morphed into a dragon. And our push back is that dragon’s don’t exist (so how can I trust the Bible.) But I am pretty sure that God realized which animals he had really created. But we can’t miss what God’s message is. Job, you can’t control any of this, but I can. I am in charge of both the things that you see and the things that you imagine.

We still give too much license to the dragons in our lives. We go running from them, even though they are products of our own imaginations. But God is still in control. Our personal dragons may not go running from us, but they will from him.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 42


Note: The VantagePoint Sermon "The Price of Following - The Image of Christ" is now available on the VantagePoint Website. You can find it here - http://www.vantagepointcc.org/The_Price_of_Following___The_Image_of_Christ.htm