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Billy the Kid, Unicorns, and Rainbows - Devotion by Pastor Tom Engel




I like a catchy title, but the title for this devotion has to be one of the most unusual that I’ve ever come up with. I’m breaking my own rule about making titles that are a bit over the top just to get attention, but in trying to make a  point that’s on the trickish side, here goes-looking at these three subjects, can you tell what they all have in common?

A little unfair, right?  Because I’m making you guess from such an odd combination of subjects.


In my mind, I see that each one of them has many legends about it, but also each one of them is real.


Wait a minute! You might be thinking, “I get the legends part, but unicorns are not real.” If you can hold on, I will show you, in a way that admittedly stretches a bit, that they are real.


Let’s get to what’s first on the list. We have a lot of information about Billy the Kid.  Western historians know about him from his Irish Catholic ancestry to his early death at age of twenty-one. He was a gunslinger and outlaw with many robberies and the killing of twenty-one men on his notorious record.


Although we know a lot about him with newspapers of the day reporting on him, over fifty movies and three television series have been made about his life. Historians don’t have that many facts to give to writers to fill that many scripts-a lot of dramatic license had to be used.


Some claim that Billy the Kid did not die at the age of twenty-one. Some of these people claimed to be him. No conclusive evidence ever came out to make these claims true. 

With so many stories going around him, we need to see which ones are the legends that go with a person who lived such a no good short life, which makes it somewhat intriguing.


In my movie watching, I’m into those based on true stories. I just watched a western with Billy the Kid as a theme. Not to spoil it for you, but, to say, it had about one lick of fact in it although it was one of the best western movies I’ve seen.


Next and most definitely, unicorns are all legend as we think of them as a child’s stuffed toy. This image is of a horse-like creature with a spiral horn coming out of its forehead.

From antiquity, Greek natural historians believed that unicorns existed in India. There are some antelope in India with horns coming out of their foreheads.


With some stretch of a criteria, we can say unicorns do exist if we want to include these antelope and maybe even rhinoceros if we are just saying a unicorn by definition has a horn coming out of its forehead.


But, if you are thinking about searching the world over for a horse-like creature of vibrant colors with a spiral horn coming out of his forehead, I don’t mean to discourage you, but good luck with that search.


But, to say, as we are thinking here today about legends and reality, I reminded of close to the same topic in a class at seminary. The professor’s specialty was literature, and he was a well respected scholar. I took it at the time rather oddly when he said that he hopes there are unicorns in heaven.


But, who knows, right? All it takes is one small herd for a short time. Maybe unicorns have sadly gone extinct like so many other species. When you get to a new heaven and new earth and happen to see this small unicorn herd, I will stand corrected, but until then, I will remain on the skeptical side.


We are now getting closer to my point as we get to rainbows. We gotta love Kermit the Frog and his song, “The Rainbow Connection.” Or even going back further, Judy Garland’s, “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”


Both of these songs talk about the other side of the rainbow. If we can get to the other side, something wonderfully special is there for us.


Here I go again being that killjoy, as much as I love singing along with these songs and get all choked up when I do, the reality is that the other side of the rainbow is pretty much like what’s on this side of the rainbow.


With this next statement, it will be the last time when I’m ruining all the fun. If you go looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, good luck with that, too. No leprechaun left his gold there because leprechauns don’t exist. Well, except maybe only on St Patrick’s Day.


Lastly, we will talk about rainbows. It would have done us good to take a trip to Kentucky and see the replica of the ark that is a museum.


As a museum, we would learn a lot of facts that would get us deeper into it and find that it’s all more than just an adorable children’s story about animals on a floating zoo.

The ark and it’s ending with a rainbow is a key part of faith not only for Noah and his family but for all generations to come and us today.


If you don’t mind that I go quickly through a Sunday School lesson on the ark and a confirmation lesson.


First, from a children’s Bible, getting on the ark two by two, we will probably see animals that look like pictures that we took on a photo safari.


Here’s the point today about legends and keeping it real-from the museum of the ark in Kentucky, we would not be seeing lions, tigers, and bears as we see on our photo safari, but we would be seeing animals that are more like when we picture dinosaurs.


And here is a succinct confirmation lesson on evolution. Evolution is divided into macro and micro.


Micro evolution occurs within a species and macro evolution occurs out of the species.

An example of micro can be easily seen how we have so many different dog breeds. At creation, there were probably a few different kinds of dogs, but through breeding we have many different kinds of dogs today from squeaky little dogs to noble big dogs. Owning a Mastiff, you can see I’m not at all bias about the size of dogs.


We agree with micro but not macro. As macro evolution is going out of the species, we do not believe that a monkey can evolve into a human being. The creation museum by the ark does a good job of explaining all of this if you want to know more.


The story of the ark can help our faiths. As we are in life for the long haul, we have to admire the dedication of Noah. It took about one hundred years to build the ark-people lived longer back then. During those years, Noah tried to get people to get ready for the flood, but not one person listened, but he kept building a huge boat in the middle of dry land.


Noah probably didn’t understand it all, but he just plain and simply did what God told him to do.

 

Next, this part is more for an adult Bible study lesson.


We have to first review some things that we know about our God. We know that His ways our above our ways. We know that He knows everything and has a plan from beginning to end. We know that He works all things out for the good.


All this that we know about God leaves us to beg the question, “If our God knows all, wouldn’t that include knowing that the humans He made would become horribly corrupt?”


Before God called on Noah to build an ark, He looked down at the humans that he made and he said that He regretted making them because they were turning out to be so “bad.”


What we are seeing here is the human side of God. Saying that God has a human side is not saying that He is part human. God is fully divine, but as He has divine attributes, he also has some human characteristics like anger and patience.


We know God gets angry about sin. He shows His wrath at times over our disobedience. Although He is patient with us, His patience can grow thin.


We need to remember always that God has a plan, but He also lets the world be the world at times, so we might see the consequences of our disobedience, so that we might learn some lessons to do better next time.


For instance, God planned for the first humans to live in paradise forever with Him, but those first two humans chose to disobey God’s good will for them.


After their fall into sin, God promised a Savior, who did come into the world and did save humans from sin that deserves damnation.


In much that same way, God knew He had to do something to save humans from their “bad” ways, so he sent a flood that would wipe out the “bad,” but He saved one righteous man to keep the world going.


The rainbow is a sign that God would never wipe out humans that way again.


We often remark how “bad” the world is getting in so many ways. When we go through history, the world has always been “bad” in many ways.


Looking down at anytime, God would see enough of this “bad” to want to destroy it.

If we are to know about any of God’s desires, it is His greatest desire to want to save people from their sins and the “bad” is causes. God always wants to renew us renew to a  life of His grace and love.


Every time we see a rainbow after it rains, it is a sign for us today of God’s desire to want to save and renew.


Even for myself as I was putting this devtion together, I’ve come to realize that the rainbow is so much like the crosses that we wear and see on our walls. These crosses are a symbol of the one real cross where Jesus died taking the punishment that we deserve for our sins. We are now saved, have forgiveness of every sin, and can be renewed to a life of grace and love in Jesus Christ.


The rainbow is an important part of what we believe just as a cross is. They tell us of how it is God’s will to save and not to destroy.


In a very regrettable way, our culture has turned the rainbow into a symbol that it was never intended for. What the gay movement has done with the rainbow as their symbol is not right because it is not what rainbows were ever meant to be.


Although we have to live in this culture that wants to so undermine our faith, we need to watch that it does not.


How do we live in a culture but not be taken away from what we believe to be true?

What we do is come here every week and take a ride on this ark that we call church.

In many traditional churches, walk in and take ake a look above you, and you will see what is meant to be the bottom of a boat. Those believers centuries ago intentionally built  churches with exposed rafters. They left them exposed not because they ran out of money to put in a dropped ceiling but to show a symbol of the ark that saved Noah from a flood.


Noah kept looking for land. By Word and Sacrament in this upside down ark, we, too, are looking for land, the promised land, that place we call heaven, and one day we will get there, for it’s God promise to us that He will surely keep, and gives us everything to have the faith that we will get to that land.


As we live in these End Times, we are seeing a lot of violence in many ways in increasing crime and wars and rumors of wars, and we might think that the whole world might be annihilated as it seems it’s going, but it won’t quite happen like that. We will see destruction, but in seeing what is destroyed, let’s keep on believing that God is planning on making all things new again.


This making of all things new again is our hope that gets us though these times.

The next time it rains look for a rainbow and know its not at all a legend or anything else but a reminder to you of God who’s only desire is to save and renew you and all people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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