WOULD YOU LET US KNOW YOU’RE HERE?
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
Make sure you have access to the Bible, a copy of the Spotlight guidebook, a writing utensil, some people to talk to, and/or something to eat and drink!
TELL YOUR FRIENDS YOU’RE HERE:
Welcome to our series:
In this series, we’re considering this reality in light of what God shows us: It's not wrong for you to need; it is not wrong for others to need. In fact, it's right. We are all designed in the image of the interdependent Trinity (a God who is three persons, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and in whose name and love we get to think about all of this) to be needy and to meet one another's needs. In this series, we'll dig into the universe's interdependent design, and marvel at its beauty.
We’re certainly not the first to find this worth talking about…
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...
This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
“But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
DECONSTRUCTING ABILITY
Listen to the song “Able” by clicking play on the video. (The visuals of this video don’t matter.) As you listen, study and interpret the lyrics and write down your personal answers to these questions:
Can you find any significance in the fact that they repeat “I’m not able” three times in a row, over and over again?
Try to guess how many people were involved in making this song. From musicians to vocalists to producers, how many do you think? How is a song like a body?
This song has a sad reality to it, but it is not without hope. Find the oft-repeated three-word phrase that gives this song a silver lining.
ABLE by NEEDTOBREATHE
There's a host of hurts we come across - none of which are like
- from the air inside the birthing room to the darkness where we die.
Though I feel I'm just as strong as any man I know
I'm not able, I'm not able, I'm not able on my own.
Carry around the secrets only heaven knows.
Crawl into our darkened rooms where only victims go.
Though I feel I'm strong enough to carry all this load
I'm not able, I'm not able, I'm not able on my own.
I'm not able, I'm not able, I'm not able on my own.
I'm not able, I'm not able, I'm not able on my own.
All my actions, false or true, selfish motives I will use.
We were born with knives in hand, trained to kill our fellow man.
If we're not better than the rest, how will children do their best?
Find your patience, find your truth, love is all we have to lose, have to lose.
'Cause I'm not able, I'm not able, I'm not able on my own.
Everything is Body
Like the song says, “I’m not able on my own.” Without musicians, writers, a choir, producers, distributors, and countless others, nothing happens.
You’re like the song. Without a million interdependent connections, you don’t happen.
The problem is, sometimes, you don’t believe that.
You don’t cooperate. You don’t collaborate. You don’t even want to! This desire to be independent and control ourselves is actually a natural part of our sinful nature. Sin’s signature move is to separate things, and it separates the parts of Christ’s body from one another.
Even worse, it separates the parts of Christ’s body from its head.
Read and think through the captions below to jog your memory. If you’re comfortable, share with those around you.
Insert absolution video here. Kent or Nathan telling a story of a false start of theirs or one from the Bible, then bringing in the Gospel and applying that forgiveness directly to the viewer.
Pray together (OR BY YOurself, if you’re doing this by yourself, which is cool, too):
Lord, if the beginning, middle, or end of a day were dependent on me - we’d all be stuck. You’ve created me for movement and innovation, for hope and a future, but I am subject to stagnation, worry, and fear. Help me be patient when it’s time to wait and ambitious when it’s time to plant. Accept me and my false-starts; love me in my hesitations, and be my beginning and my end. Amen.
Play this song, and consider it a chance to meditate on what you just thought through, grab a refresh on your beverage, and/or sing along.
A Finely Tuned Machine
Let’s talk about the wristwatch.
The Zenith El Primero is one of the finest watches ever made.
The first El Primero (which is a funny thing to say, since “el primero” is an Esperanto phrase meaning “the first” - so, the first The First) was released in 1969 after 7 years of development and research. It took 7 years to develop one watch because the El Primero was the world’s first automatic chronograph that could accurately measure time down to 1/10th of a second, meaning the mechanism inside beats at a frequency of 36,000 vibrations per hour.
Not only that, but this self-winding watch could last for 50+ hours without needing adjustment.
It was an unparalleled feat of engineering on a very small scale.
It’s a truly impressive timepiece, as many are.
But this one is the first. The beginning.
El Primero.
In fact, to emphasize it’s special place in watch-making history, the marketing team gave it a frankly insane tag line. They called it:
“The symbol of perfection forever.”
That’s right. The symbol of perfection forever. (!) What an incredible statement.
It’s possible that you’ve heard someone talk about the creation of the universe, and in order to argue against a random-chance-dependent evolution story of the universe beginning and to explain their reasoning for a God-planned-and-executed creation, they used an analogy about a finely tuned watch. It usually goes something like this:
Imagine you’re walking through a forest.
On the forest floor, you see pine needles, pine cones, tufts of grass & weeds, and the occasional stick.
All of a sudden, you come across a very fine wristwatch.
Would you walk past it without thinking twice, just like you did the pinecones and sticks? Of course not.
You’d know it was something different. You’d know it wasn’t natural. You’d know it was something someone had made.
The universe is the same. If you take a close look at it, it is too finely tuned & complex to be the result of random chance.
Whether you like that line of reasoning or not, it doesn’t matter for our purpose here. We think about that story in this Spotlight because if you buy into the logical conclusion of that story, you need to think critically about the way it makes you feel about the universe.
People who think about the universe as an incredibly fine-tuned machine that God made over the course of just 6 days to the exceptional standard of being “very good,” sometimes start thinking about the universe like it’s a 1969 El Primero - a perfectly constructed machine that was designed to be just what the watch is: the symbol of perfection forever. Which means they think the point of beginning the universe (and beginning time, thereby beginning every beginning ever to begin) was to make this perfect thing and watch the beauty of it as it works perfectly.
But if you think that way, as you proceed from Genesis 1 to Genesis 3 and you see the fall into sin,