Devotional from Pastor Dave August 9, 2023

Last week, after a whirlwind tour of colleges in Boston, New York, and New Jersey, we slowed down for a few days at the beach at Ocean Grove, NJ. This is an historic Methodist area in the northeast. Methodists set up a camp meeting assembly there shortly after the Civil War, and it’s been operating ever since, a lot longer than our closest camp meeting assembly at Lake Junaluska, NC. The streets are named for prominent early Methodist leaders. There is a lake there, Wesley Lake, named for the founder of the Methodist movement. Adjacent to Ocean Grove is Asbury Park, named after the first American bishop of the Methodist Church, Francis Asbury. I had heard about these Methodist holy lands, but this was my first visit there in person.

Tracy remembers going to youth gatherings at Ocean Grove growing up, like our youth go to Resurrection in Gatlinburg. There’s a huge auditorium that can seat 6,500 people where prominent preachers and Bible professors come to speak (Billy Graham preached there many times). It has a pipe organ with over 200 ranks and over 12,000 pipes (Michael Huseman would have a field day!). There are gospel music concerts along the boardwalk every day and weekly youth gatherings on the beach. Families can rent canvas tents (that are now attached to small cabins) for the summer; apparently the waiting list is several years’ long (we didn’t put our names on it).

As we were walking through one of the parks, I saw that there were a number of bricks and benches given in honor or in memory of loved ones. One of the bricks in particular caught my eye. It was in memory of someone, and underneath the person’s name, there was this line: “We thought you were invincible.”

That line caught my attention because that was something my mom said about my dad nearly thirty years ago after he died from a brief but brutal bout with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He had been in such good health. He didn’t drink or smoke or chew (or run around with people who do). He was playing golf and tennis three months before he died. Not only mom but we all thought he was invincible.

Sometimes we can think we are invincible ourselves. Our son Wesley recently discovered the famous poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, where the poet thanks “whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.” But it’s not just teenagers who may think they are invincible. As I am approaching a milestone birthday this fall, I am continuing a long process of reluctantly realizing that my body isn’t quite as capable of some things as it used to be. I am not, as it turns out, invincible.

And thanks be to God for that! And so I am coming to terms with my uninvincibility. And I am coming to appreciate more and more something that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

We are jars of clay. We are not invincible. But therein lies both our deepest treasure and our truest testimony to the extraordinary power of God.