Calvin and Hobbes is one of my many favorite cartoon strips. That may be due to the author’s[1] theological bent which always catches my eye, and most often my admiration.
I admire (and often envy) the way the creator of this ‘toon can present a
complex Biblical theme on the meaning of life, with just four-panels and a
precocious, self-absorbed six-year-old. That
may be because the creator, Bill Watterson, modeled the main characters, the
boy, Calvin, and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, after a preacher and a moral,
wondering cynic. You gotta love it!
In the first and third panel, Calvin looks into the sky’s East, then West,
as if he’s searching the whole of the heavens.
In the second panel he announces with certainty his significant place
(as only a six-year-old can proclaim from his sandbox). In the fourth, and final panel, Calvin
concludes, and allows that he might be just a piece, a speck of dust in the big
pile of the puzzle, and not the magnificent centerpiece his first statement
demanded.
This is the ongoing human struggle for identity and perspective on the
significance and purpose of life. I
suppose if I had Bill Watterson’s ability to get to the nub in so short a
presentation (it only takes eight seconds to read), I guess my sermons would be
a lot shorter, and my congregation would always beat the Baptist brethren to
the local restaurants on Sunday.
For You Today
There will never
be a test to pass on Sunday’s sermon.
So, here’s a delicious short-thought to ponder: When the sermon is spoken this Sunday,
whether you take notes, or not, take note of just
one salient, provoking, life issue your
pastor presents, and contemplate, think-deeply, and measure it against your
life. Take it home and see what God says
to you in prayer that day, or the rest of the week. And then find some way to put into action
whatever God brings into your life that next week. You may not have a stuffed tiger that will
talk back to you like Calvin’s Hobbes, but the Holy Spirit will lead those who
seriously seek the Lord.
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
We Mortals and How to Cure a Cosmic Headache and When a Child Speaks
[1] Images: via Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
[1] ©Bill
Watterson named the characters Calvin (for John Calvin, 16th century
theologian) and Hobbes (for 17th century philosopher Thomas
Hobbes). For much more background
information see Wikipedia
here.
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