Starry Starry Night

Starry Starry Night

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” -2 Corinthians 5:17

I love that old Don McLean song, “Starry Starry Night” (aka Vincent). As a child of the 70’s that’s a song I can still remember playing in the kitchen on my parent’s static filled AM/FM radio. It wasn’t until years later I understood what the song was about, which made me love it even more. As a teen who struggled with insecurities and identity - McLean’s “Vincent” was someone I could truly identify with. He was incredibly creative, deeply introspective, and slowly but surely losing his grip on sanity, reality, and life.

For me, fear manifest itself most prominently when I would get lost while driving. As someone with absolutely no sense of direction (I get disoriented pulling out of my driveway) the idea of getting lost while driving was (and sometimes still is) absolutely crippling. It’s literally on the phobia end of the spectrum for me.

I remember one time (while working at the Sizzler in Leon Valley) my manager, Frank, asked me to deliver something to another store. Now please remember this is like 1983 so it’s pre GPS, pre cell phones, and pre Waze app. All I had to do was drive down the highway - drop the stuff off - get back on the highway and go home. It should have taken me 15 minutes tops; but I got disoriented and ended up about 45 minutes away from home. I was in such a panic that I remember nearly pulling a u-turn on a clover leaf and driving against traffic. Eventually I found a phone booth (if you don’t know what that is - run a Google search), called my Dad, and he gave me directions on how to get home.

Fast-forward to last week… I’m in northern Ghana, which is a few miles further from home than Sizzler. It’s pitch black outside and I’m alone in a van with just a driver and a translator. I literally have no idea where we are going, but the road has recently been decimated by flood waters. A couple of times I couldn’t even see the bottom of the huge holes in the road. If we had drifted about ½ a meter either way… my guess is we would never have been seen again. We were driving North-ish (??) slowly, but surely. After about 45 minutes of "driving" you could hear a faint noise in the distance over the engine… soon you could tell it was singing. The van stopped, and I opened the door and stepped out under the cloudless canopy of that star-saturated night sky. There were well over 100 people gathered in a field. If you could have found it on a map it probably would have read, “Middle of Nowhere.”

My translator walked me over to my spot where I waited for the local pastor. He invited me to the makeshift pulpit. I had no sermon prepared - not because I’m opposed to preparation, but because every time I tried to prepare my mind would wander aimlessly. So for the entire drive past vast sinkholes - further and further away from the rest of the team, further and further from civilization, security, and the “known” - I prayed, “God, please use me. Please give me Your words. Please reach people and bring them from death to life.” There was no fear, no phobia, no debilitating sense of panic - just a supernatural sense of peace and purpose.

I preached a very short message about God, the Creator of the universe and the Creator of humanity. I shared with them about humanity as the pinnacle of God’s creation - intended to dwell in His life-giving presence forever. I shared with them the reality of sin and its consequence of separation from God unto death. I shared about the unmerited gift of grace available through Jesus Christ and what He did at the Cross. Many came forward that starry starry night and accepted Jesus as their LORD and Savior.

How does an average kid from Leon Valley go from being afraid of his own shadow and afraid of getting lost just a few miles from home... to driving on another continent in the dead of night on washed out dirt trails with no idea where he’s going so he can preach words he doesn’t have to people he doesn’t know to communicate in a language he can’t speak? There are all kinds of possible answers, but the correct one is this…  he has become a new creation in Christ.

As I shared with my students at the Bible College in Navrango Ghana later that week - God’s desire for us is NOT to merely become more ethical, more virtuous, more moral, or “better” versions of our old-self; but rather to become new creations in Christ. The problem with striving to become improved versions of our old-self is that we’re still the same decaying meatbags dead in sin rather than new creations born of the Spirit and alive in Christ Jesus.

Just a few chapters after writing “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” Paul then writes, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test?”

If your life looks more like the fools on MTV Cribs - chasing after wealth, homes, sex, autos, and fleeting material things - than the abandoned sacrificial life of Christ our Savior… What evidence of being a NEW creation is there? Are you truly a new creation or merely a more virtuous, more ethical, more legalistic, more religious version of the same decaying meatbag dead-in-sin self of old?

As I stood there looking up at that cloudless sky that night, I knew that there wasn’t a single rational reason in the world why an insecure kid from Leon Valley would ever leave the security and safety of home and family to jump on a plane, fly across an ocean, hop into a van and drive into the darkness to a place I didn’t know, to speak words I didn’t have, to people I’d never met, in a language I’ve never heard… But when 30+ people came forward to announce that the Holy Spirit blessed them with the gift of faith in Christ, and they were born-again as new creations…  It was just then that I looked up into that starry starry night and gave thanks to God Almighty.

Blessings,

-Kevin M. Kelley

aMostUnlikelyDisciple.com