When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. – Acts 2:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 6, 2017): Acts 2

Neil deGrasse Tyson recently tweeted a picture of the moon with the caption “A Lunar Eclipse flat-Earther’s have never seen.” The image shows the moon with the shadow of something that looks like it could be a giant pencil – or, for Tyson, the suggestion of a flat-earth – separating the top of the moon from the bottom. Tyson’s image is intended to poke fun at all those who steadfastly believe that the earth is flat, regardless of what Tyson and a vast majority of others regard as overwhelming evidence that the earth is round like a ball. And despite the overwhelming evidence, it seems that some are willing to take their lives into their own hands to launch themselves into the sky on homemade rockets to snap a picture of a vast, flat earth.A Lunar Eclipse flat-Earther’s have never seen.A Lunar Eclipse flat-Earther’s have never seen.

Oscar Wilde said that “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” We have the extraordinary capability to make substantial commitments to almost any philosophy – including a belief in a flat-earth. During the American civil war, people died protecting the right to own slaves, yet few today would consider that a worthy or true cause. And yet, we live, and we often die over things that are not worthy of us.

Enter Christianity; this belief in a man who lived, taught, and died for the idea that not only did God exist and that he created everything that we know, but that he loved us, his creation, enough to send his Son into the world to die as payment for everything that we have done wrong. A belief that says that, in the end, we will be able to find peace and forgiveness with the one who created us because of the death of this one man. For many, the idea is as ridiculous as the idea of a flat-earth. God does not seem to have a place in our post-modern society. And yet, as much as learn and grow greater in our knowledge – there is still things that we do not understand; unknowns that still only a God understanding can fill.

Jesus died on a cross. But Wilde is right. “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” Maybe that is why his coming seemed to be accompanied by unexplainable miracles. This one, on the day of Pentecost, was one such miracle. It is a miracle of hearing, not of speaking. Everyone heard the disciples in their own native language. Once more, God showed himself willing to step into our space and verbalize a message in a language that we could understand. Once more, God had shown his love to us. And maybe the greatest miracle, and the best explanation, of God happens when we take that love, given freely to us, and share it without reservation with each other.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Acts 3