August 18 2016–Devotions from Rio Olympics
Volleyball

“When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”  Genesis 6:1-4

Volleyball is one of those sports at the Olympics that I just love to watch. There is something about watching these giants, men and women, who are just so tall and elegant, try to “out-giant” the others. The whole game is so fast, and yet there are moments when it seems as if they are moving in slow motion. Yes these people are such giants, but they also seem to have the agility of ninja warriors – “digging” balls just millimeters from the floor, diving into the crowd to bring a ball back into play, and serving the ball as fast as a mediocre fast ball.

There seems to be a time when the earth was populated by Olympian volleyball players – the Nephilim. There does not seem to be any agreement on the meaning of his text, and maybe, just maybe, we need to resign ourselves to the fact that we will just never know if this is a story meant to be metaphor, or reality. But, it does not matter, because in my mind, nothing is out of the realm of G-d and G-d’s activity in the world. We see giants in the world even today – but we know that their condition is either genetic or due to tumors on the pituitary gland that allows growth hormone to produce uncontrollably. We have reasons for “gigantism” – they just saw people like Goliath and called them “men of renown”.

What G-d is hoping is that we might, from time to time, “uncontrollable growth of our faith hormone”. When we put our complete trust in G-d and faith in the cross of Jesus, then the Holy Spirit will take control of our acts of faith, trust, mercy, love and Grace may just produce people of renown regarding faith.

Pastor Dave