God is not a pigeon.

I like to have things figured out, in fact, I think we all do. We like to clear the air and put away all the issues once we think they are resolved, never to be examined again. While we are young, its fun to try on different points of view and ways of approaching things, but the older we get, the more solidified we get. We don’t really want to revisit things to see if there is something new we could learn, because that might involve having to change our outlook or opinion on something, and that requires a lot of time and energy, so we think.

Mark 12:28-34
“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.   30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'   31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."  32 "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”

The greatest hurdle the Jews had before them at this time was that God was doing a new thing. For centuries, the blood of sacrifices had covered the sins of the people, but now that era was drawing to a close and Jesus would supercede all other sacrifices forever. Even though this transition was prophesied about in multiple places, people had great difficulty letting go of the sacrificial system and, later, the kosherim – the Jewish purity laws. Even within the Church, as Acts and early Church history tells us, this revolution was a big issue. There was even a branch of the Church, called the  Ebionites, who just couldn’t make the jump, and broke off from the mainstream Church. They lasted a few centuries, but eventually dwindled away.

We forget that God does new things. We like to think that once we reach a certain maturity level in our faith, we’ve got God figured out. Wrong. God can and will do new things, use surprising people to do it, or just out and out break into the world in a supernatural way. God is the ultimate Artist, we are the ones who want to pigeonhole His work.