Have you ever considered what it would be like to be the world’s best at anything?
I made the statement above somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Every time I have ever eaten at Showmars Restaurant, I chuckle at a sign they have prominently displayed in each restaurant which reads, “Home of the World’s Best fish sandwich!”
That’s quite a statement. There must be tons of fish sandwiches out there; and, to proclaim yours is the best is really out of hand!
I have had some doozies too! There is a place right outside of Key West, Florida, a real-deal, hole-in-the-wall called Geiger Key Marina. Now this place knows fish!
Geiger Key Marina serves undoubtedly the best blackened grouper sandwich on the planet! They don’t need a sign either! Just really great fish!
(That is if the restaurant is still there after Hurricane Irma. I have not heard if it survived. Can’t seem to get anymore news from down there.)
Anyhow, back to Showmars…I am tempted to pull a Will Ferrell impression on them whenever I order food. You may recall in the movie Elf, Will Ferrell played the role of a character named Buddy.
Buddy literally just fell off the turnip truck; and, he notices a sign inside a coffee shop that reads, “World’s best coffee!”
Ferrell comes unglued and shouts to the establishment, “Congratulations! You did it! You have the best coffee in the world!”
Yes indeed, it is quite a statement to claim to be the world’s best at anything! And…if anything, that little boy back in the day who had the loaves and fishes probably had the best fish sandwich in the world! It multiplied and that’s a tough feat to replicate!
And, this is at the heart of where I am going. Christ has a habit of taking the ordinary and turning it into the extraordinary or the world’s best for his glory.
I am often amazed when I watch the Carolina Panthers preshow before each football game. The preshow always features the injury report and lists off the walking wounded.
I sometimes laugh…not at the injuries but at the Carolina Panthers’ coach who will have to cobble a team together knowing Greg Olsen and some of his best players are on the sideline.
I laugh because it is gameday and the show will go on and Coach Rivera is just going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat and come up a plan using what he has!
Roll the dice buddy! Let’s see what happens.
Contrast this scenario with the Body of Christ, the church! Christ does not attend recruiting camps in an order to obtain the world’s best anybody!
Christ excels at taking the regular, the ordinary and sometimes the neglected and equips them to do extraordinary things. Again, just look at that ordinary little boy whose name is lost to obscurity but managed to donate five loaves and two fish to a banquet that would end up feeding over five thousand people (Matthew 14:19).
Another example is old Moses out in the desert, balking at God for being instructed to confront the most powerful person on earth. The Lord said to Moses, “What’s that in your hand” (Exodus 4:2 NIV)?
It was a stick. Nothing more than an ordinary walking staff.
But, the Lord made the staff extraordinary when he instructed Moses to throw it on the ground. The staff became a snake.
Incidentally, right before this scene the Lord tells Moses that he will soften the hearts of the Egyptian people to donate their jewelry to the Israelites so they’d have funds for travel towards the Promised Land (Exodus 3:21-22).
Any one of us can realize our dreams and our potential for a glorious, spacious life for the love of Christ. Money, degrees, property, station, position and pedigree do not matter.
Our major problem is that we have a limited perspective based solely upon what we can see. This is a tremendous error!
Christ is always behind the scenes, preparing to make something extraordinary.
We do not need to have the world’s best fish sandwich or the world’s best cup of coffee! All we need is to take an inventory of what we do have, offer it up to the Master and then let him write a game plan with this in mind.
His blessings are designed to multiply and create a domino effect of tremendous impact. Just what can Christ do with what we give him?
Roll the dice! Offer up what you have and just see what Christ will do!
The sky is the limit!