June 19, 2011 Sermon by Connor Lofdahl

Happy Father’s Day!

One of my favorite things to do on the weekends is to spend time with my dad. Sometimes we play guitar together, sometimes we play a Japanese board game called Go, sometimes we play tennis, and sometimes we just veg out and play video games. Just a few months ago, my dad and I built a bridge over a creek in our backyard. I was sitting on the couch drawing cartoons, and Dad told me to come outside. We went to the garage and he got out his toolbox. I said, “What’s that for?” and he responded, “You’ll see in just a sec.” Then we got some wooden planks, and he told me we were going to build a bridge. Dad had a plan, and even though I didn’t know quite what it was, I wasn’t worried about it because I trusted him.

In today’s reading from Genesis, we heard about how God made a plan. He created everything with care. He didn’t just go “Abracadabra” and all of existence just suddenly appeared. The first thing he made was light. Maybe that was so He could see what he was doing! After he made the light, he saw that it was good. In fact, after each step, God would step back and look at what He made and say, “Hey, yeah; I like that – it’s good!” This is sorta like when Dad and I were building the bridge. After each step, we would step back and look at it and make sure it looked right, and we’d say, “Yeah, that’s good!” It’s also like when I’m drawing a cartoon, and I look at my character and it doesn’t look quite right, so I add something like an antenna or a buck tooth, and then it looks great, so I say “Yeah, that’s good!”

God’s plan is still going on, and we’re a big part of it. In today’s psalm, it says that even though God created the heavens, the moon, and the stars, and we might feel like tiny specks of dust in the universe, we are still very important in God’s eyes -- so important, in fact, that He trusts us to take care of His creation. We might not know quite what the whole plan is, but we know we can trust him, because he’s got it all mapped out.

Today is Trinity Sunday, where we talk about God being three persons in one: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe that without all three persons, the plan wouldn’t work. God the Father created the plan, God the Son (Jesus) came to Earth and told us about it, and God the Holy Spirit helps us to carry out our role in the plan: to obey, praise, and serve God, but most of all, to love Him and share that love with others. If we can do this, then things will work out just fine, and then maybe God will say, “Yeah – that’s good!”