Worship | 20 Questions.

Every day at 8:30am, Maxwell staff spend a few minutes together worshiping the Lord. Every week, a different faculty member is assigned to the week's worships. This week, it's "Mr. Webb's" turn. I'll be publishing my worship thoughts to the site every morning (hopefully). Today's worship: God reveals his self to us through His son, Jesus.

STAFF MEETING ROOM - My trip to the Mara was a little disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed sleeping in the midget tent as much as the next guy. I got to see my second lion, taking a small breakfast break. And the miles and miles of wildebeests was definitely a sight I’ll never forget.

But aside from those things, I could only classify my time as “okay.” Sabbath afternoon, we saw pretty much nothing, and I could feel my vehicle’s entertainment level plummeting. That’s when I decided to step up. I could save this trip. I’d go old school, instituting a time-wasting device known since the beginning of time: 20 questions.

20 Questions is the world’s absolute best way to annoy a human being. Millions of years ago, cavemen would wake up, roll off their stone, and go to their job of walking around, hitting stuff with sticks. They’d take a short lunch break, hit stuff with sticks until 10 minutes before 5, and then run home to prepare a supper of the daily kill. When they finally had the chance to sit back and take a load off their feet, though, they’d have to play their cave-children’s favorite game, 20 grunts.

Now, years later, the same basic scene occurs, but it’s expanded to include trips to the doctor’s office, quiet scenes in a movie theater, and, most importantly, long car trips. I immediately began the game, first targeting Laura Richli. However, the little whippersnapper proved to be too smart, and I knew to waste adequate amounts of time, level of difficulty had to be raised.

So I moved from Laura to Valerie, and picked an intangible thing as my object: science. Valerie was flabbergasted how it was a thing she used every day, but she couldn’t see it, taste it, or touch it.

After about an hour of driving across the African plains with no correct response from Val, I finally clued her into what her object was. She was… unenthused, to say the least. However, my mission of wasting time was accomplished, and we got back to the camp in what seemed like record time.

20 questions is obnoxious, yes. I know something. I understand something. I get something. You don’t. Let’s see how long it takes you to figure it out. Isn’t it great that God doesn’t play 20 questions with us? He lets us know right from the start who he is. Sure, he’s a deity, more complex and all-knowing than we can even fathom. But he takes something we’ve seen and tells us, “I’m this.” That something is Jesus. (John 1:18)

¹⁸No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day.

When you see Christ, you’ve seen our God. (John 14:9)

⁹"You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, "Where is the Father?'

By simply looking at Christ, we “get” our Lord. It’s much easier to understand the man, the apple that falls from the tree, than to try to pinpoint something so majestic as our Lord.

My challenge today is to hang out in one of the Gospels you haven’t in a while, read something about Jesus that you haven’t in a while, and think of His, and our, Daddy as you haven’t for a while. We have a great privilege to know our God, not by asking hundreds of questions on who he is, but by looking at someone even we can duplicate. Any questions?

-cw