God Speaking in a Loud Voice

I am one of the last people to buy into the "That was a message from God" argument. Honestly, most of the time, when that phrase or something like it comes out of someone's mouth, I usually find myself pretty irritated. For example, if someone tells me that he's really not sure whether or not he should stay in a relationship, and right at that moment Tom Petty's "Time to Move On" comes on the radio, that person might say, "See? It's a sign from God! I should break up!" to which I retort, "No, it's just a song on the radio. Are you really going to let your life be ruled by a DJ's playlist?"

I'm a big believer in coincidence, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

HOWEVER, even someone like myself has to pause after what happened last night and begin to worry that God might truly be speaking to us in a loud voice. What happened last night was this: a giant, sixty foot tall statue of Jesus that sits beside I-75 just north of Cincinnati was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The statue shows (or I guess, I need to start saying "showed") the top half of Jesus rising up with his hands in the air. A cross--which was not, for whatever reason, to the same scale as Jesus--leaned against Jesus' stomach. It actually took me a while to figure out what this statue was supposed to represent. The presence of the cross is what threw me. At first I thought it was supposed to represent the moment on the cross when Jesus cries out, "My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me?" But I thought, how can Jesus raise his hands to heaven when they're nailed to the cross? Then I read somewhere that the body of water beside the statue is where the church holds baptisms in fair weather, so now I think the statue was supposed to represent the moment after Jesus is baptized when he rises out of the water and the spirit of the Lord "descended upon him like a dove."

Depending on whom you talk to, the statue was either a) a loving tribute to the Lord, meant to counter the unGodly influences around it (like the Hustler store right across the interstate) or it was b) an ugly eyesore that all but cheapened Christianity and was an embarrassment to the community, many of whom derided it with nicknames like "Touchdown Jesus" or "Drowning Jesus" or "Big Butter Jesus."

No matter which camp you fall into, I think we can ALL agree--if this is indeed a message from God--what that message would be: Don't build your statues out of Styrofoam, especially if your statue is going to be taller than anything around it and is going to have its hands raised to the sky like some Dixie Cup lightning rods!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against statues. I'm all for them, actually. I just think there's a reason that the ones that last are made out of durable materials like copper or marble. You know, things that aren't flammable.

All that's left of the statue now are the metal beams that were the frame beneath the Styrofoam and fiberglass. The minister says he plans to rebuild the statue. I have a better idea. I say he leaves the beams exactly the way they are now and builds beside them a plaque with the following written on it:

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 7:24-27