QUESTION: What do $100, a 410 pound pumpkin, and 760 golf balls have in common?
ANSWER: Absolutely nothing.
Unless you hear my story... It's inconceivable.
A little back story...
I'm no stranger to depression, sickness, even suicidal thoughts. At age 16, surrounded by the inability to control any aspect of my painful life, I wanted to be dead. Praise God, I never really attempted it and only a few years later Jesus saved me.
He's been filling me with hope daily for over three decades now.
I can't fully describe the steadfast faithfulness of God. I've heard of it. I've seen others experience it. I have experienced it, over and over again. His powerful care for us is, well... inconceivable.
Consequently, when I hear of others attempting to take their lives, or worse, succeeding, I feel it deeply. If they could just taste Your faithfulness Father, they wouldn't be hopeless.
I ache.
Makes sense, right? God feels it deeply. We are one with Him in Christ, so we have the same Spirit. If we draw close to HIm, we feel what He feels.
Recently, attempted suicides and successful ones have hit close to home.
Our Father in heaven feels it... His heart is broken.
I feel it too and my heart is broken.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't have everything figured out. I've been walking through this life with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ for thirty years and I still haven't got everything figured out.
For example... Friday morning I sat on the swinging bench on the deck behind our home looking at the mid-morning sun. I was pondering life. Meditating on pieces of the Bible I've memorized. Pouring my heart out to God.
He said to cast all our cares upon Him because He cares for us.
So I was casting.
I've got cares... lots of them.
Truck loads of them.
Am I doing Your will Lord? Or mine?
Have I said YES to too many people? Am I overcommitted?
Our home. My career. My calling. They all pull at my heart.
Is there enough of me to go around? I feel so small.
Do I do enough for those in my tiny circle to show them You love them? That I love them?
Could I have done something to prevent the pain of others around me?
Why don't I feel free, when I know that I am?
Should I quit everything and be a wanderer for Jesus? Or does my submission to the path before me equal submission to You, God?
How does rising on my career path glorify the Lord? How could abandoning it damage those I've been serving?
I see John, the disciple of Jesus, at the end of the Gospel that bears his name, being told when he is old, others will lead him to places he doesn't want to go. Is that what I'm feeling?
Why do I feel like I am being led where I don't want to go?
I feel inadequate and under-qualified, yet, I can't UN-believe that He is with me... that He will never fail me.
Why am I terrified at the prospect of new or more responsibility and yet confident that the Lord has got it covered?
I told you I have cares... and that's just a taste of them.
Father... I prayed. I need you to speak to me now. Do I continue to do what I've been doing? Or is this pressure I feel actually You telling me that You are just waiting for me to drop everything so I can really know You?
Told you I don't have it figured out.
Bet you didn't expect to read that.
Wasn't this about $100, a 410 pound pumpkin, and a golf ball?
Right. Inconceivable.
Looking back tonight I see a little more clearly,
Our church has turned its attention to going out into the community and stop hiding behind the walls of our building.
This weekend we had a festival called Pumpkin-fest.
The final event, at 5 pm earlier today (it's 12pm as I write) was the pumpkin drop. The Chamber of Commerce sells tickets for the drop to raise money for community events. 5$ buys a ticket. The ticket has a number on it. The same number is sharpie-d onto a golfball and placed inside the biggest pumpkin I've even seen. (410 pounds this year) Then the pumpkin is gutted on the ground and is filled with 760 golfballs. Then they raise it on a crane, I'm guessing 40-50 feet in the air... and they let it go.
What happens when a 410 pound pumpkin, loaded with over 700 golf balls, gets dropped 40 to 50 feet? The golf balls go everywhere!
The ones that travel the farthest are all measured and recorded.
The first place winner, the ball that went the farthest = $500.
The second place winner, the ball that went the second farthest = $250.
The third place winner, the ball that went... you get the idea. = $100.
I got pictures. Here's the math.
The farthest golf ball travelled 134 feet from the drop point. Using the formula for the area of a circle (score one for geometry class!) we learn that the SPLAT AREA covered 56, 381 square feet!
The actual pumpkin was dropped in a fenced area that is about 210 ft x 144 ft in size.
Much of the fence around the perimeter was lined with people. Heather (my wife) and I had moved beyond the thickest clusters of people to get a good video of the SPLAT!
I remember finding a good spot, but she felt we were blocking some little kids' views so we moved about 20 feet further down to an even less crowded spot.
I should tell you that from 2pm to 4pm we volunteered at the Chamber of Commerce tent selling the tickets. On a surface level... it's just tickets. On a supernatural level... we had made ourselves available for the Lord to come and do in, around, through, and beyond us whatever He had in mind.
I should also tell you our worship service this morning was so loud I couldn't hear myself leading our people in song. Such a joy and childlike humility filled our people it was... inconceivable.
It was almost like our Father was happy just to see that we were going into the festival to represent Him.
Now, I would be lying if I said I was comfortable. I'm definitely not comfortable meeting strangers. Maybe you're the same.
The Lord, however, said to Go into all the world and preach the gospel... so we went.
We are not experts at preaching. And today's culture is challenging.
I have no idea what I'm doing, beyond this one thought... Here I am Lord. Use me.
We prayed. We met beautiful people of all ages. We got to hear some of their stories. We got to share some of our own. We preached through our serving.
Some of it was awkward. Some of it was natural. Some of it was supernatural.
All of it eternally valuable. Who knows what the Presence of the Lord was accomplishing in the crowd? Not me.
Perhaps some met real christians for the first time.
Perhaps the faith of some that had gotten buried with the cares of life was dusted off and re-ignited.
We had helped load up the tents and tables into a van before the DROP, our new friends were grateful the help, and we were happy to give it.
Where was I? Oh yes, the countdown.
My video was running. Ten... nine... eight... I thought, that pumpkin is really high.
Seven... six... five... Parents are shushing kids. Kids are on their tiptoes with anticipation.
Four... three... two... one... They pull the release lines.
Down comes the 410 pound squash-meteor.
The sound was kind of like a mix of SPLAT and BOOM. 56,381 square feet awaited rolling golf balls and pumpkin shrapnel.
We were about a hundred feet away from the impact and golf balls rolled up to the fence and in some cases beyond! One passed under the fence to our left about 15 feet beside us.
It was the only one to make it into where we were standing.
Now I've never been to one of these things before. So we walked up to the ball. People began warning us,,, DON'T TOUCH the balls! DON'T MOVE the balls! As I got near, this random guy, probably a pumpkin drop veteran, looks at the number on the ball.
"This one's number 646, whoever has that number."
Did I mention I had bought a ticket? One of our new friends gave me five bucks because we had left our money at the church. So I bought one.
Did I mention that I told God I need Him to speak to me... So I knew that what I was doing here and in life generally, is really what He wanted?
I pulled the ticket out of my pocket and looked at it. Inconceivable! My ticket was number 646.
As they measured the distance for all the balls that looked far enough out to win, they eventually came to measure mine... 117 feet 2 inches.
I didn't care about winning, though I had made the comment to a man in line behind me that if I did win, I could do an awful lot of good with $500.
It was a joke.
It took about 20 minutes for all the golf balls that warranted it to get measured.
I thought about the numbers... 117... 2.
What book in the Bible has 117 chapters? Only one. Psalms.
I looked up Psalm 117:2. (Some of you are laughing right now... it's ok. We've all heard jokes that teach us why we don't base life decisions on random Bible verses.)
Does this situation seem random?
In over 56,000 square feet, a golf ball with my number on it, that had exploded from a giant pumpkin, rolled within 15 feet of where I was standing, and measured at a distance of 117 feet, 2 inches, and I thought of the Psalms as I was seeking God in the place where I had made myself available to Him.
Psalm 117:2 NLT
"For His unfailing love for us is powerful: the Lord's faithfulness endures forever. Praise the Lord!"
All at once... a reminder of His unfailing powerful love and enduring faithfulness AND His desire for me to simply... Praise the Lord.
The announcer got everyone's attention... Did I mention I needed God to speak to me?
"In third place, at a distance of 117 feet 2 inches... David Tanner!"
I won third place... $100.
79 fifteen foot radius circles will fit inside the 56,000+ SPLAT ZONE.
The probability of 1 of 760 golf balls landing within your 15 foot radius circle would have been 1:9 (assuming all balls got distributed evenly... they didn't), times the probability that your one specific ball makes it to you is more like 1 : 6,840.
And that doesn't include all the possible variables we could factor in like grass length, wind, etc.
How improbable that David Tanner would win one of 3 prizes...
David Tanner who doesn't have it all figured out...
David Tanner the guy who simply went to a community event with his wife and others from his church to make themselves available for the Lord to do whatever He wanted...
David Tanner the husband of Heather Tanner, both of whom were both representing the Jesus and the local Chamber of Commerce...
David Tanner who has questions that He needs the Lord to answer...
David Tanner who has truck loads of cares he has to continually give back to the Lord...
For that David Tanner, to walk across the fair grounds to claim his prize, wearing his Mercy Point Gouverneur T-shirt, with his wife who was also wearing her Mercy Point Gouverneur t-shirt for everyone gathered to witness...
For that David Tanner, to stand in the middle of the unfailing powerful love and faithfulness of God that endures forever and only have one real responsibility... to Praise the Lord...
Why, it's almost... Inconceivable.
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