A Piece of Blue Sky: The Dynamics of Faith

By Darrel E. Berg

A Piece of Blue Sky: The Dynamics of Faith turns to Abraham, the patriarch of the faith, to find both encouragement and challenge. In a classic series of sermons on this figure, Darrel E. Berg explores the dynamics of faith. Seeking the parallels between Abrahams path and the course facing an individual seeking to live by faith in todays world, he offers several key, guiding insights. The life of faith is like a pendulum that swings between doubt and trust. The person who follows God in faith will face times of sacrifice. God desires for individuals, by his grace, to accept their own identities and to embrace their places in Gods plans.
A key message of A Piece of Blue Sky is clear: Christians lives are not necessarily free from tension or exempt from strife. Its encouragement is equally unambiguous: despite the swings between enthrallment and discouragement with Gods calling, Christians can remain committed, like Abraham, to remain obedient to God and to follow his guidance for living.
In A Piece of Blue Sky: The Dynamic of Faith, one hears clearly that just as Abraham never found all that he sought on his own journey through life, Christians today can continue to seek the promised land to which God calls them. Even when that journey leads to places where clouds of adversity hang over the life of faith, Abrahams example reminds them that God always holds out the promise of a piece of blue sky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480830639

Darrel E. Berg

Darrel E. Berg earned degrees from the St. Paul Bible Institute, now Crown College, Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska, Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and the San Francisco Theological Seminary. Since retiring in 1986, he has served churches in Iowa, Washington, Nebraska, Australia, and New Zealand.

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Copyright © 2016 Darrel E. Berg.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

The original jacket was created by Zondervan Publishing Co. in 1965. The title is with permission from Mr. Frank Corsaro from his play A Piece Of Blue Sky

Permission to quote from the Saturday Review, October 6, 1962, May 18, June 22, and August 31, 1963, is gratefully acknowledged.

Permission from Harper & Row to quote from Martin Luther King’s Why We Can’t Wait and Gene Bartlett’s The Audacity of Preaching is also gratefully acknowledged.

Material from The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, © 1962 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Cinerama Inc. and Zallen Films, S.A.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3062-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3063-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906633

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/26/2016

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 A Tale of Two Cities

Chapter 2 Escape to Egypt

Chapter 3 South to Sodom

Chapter 4 Not for Sale

Chapter 5 Signing a Contract with Yourself

Chapter 6 A Good Word for God

Chapter 7 Testing: One, Two, Three

Chapter 8 The Firstborn and the Bitter

Chapter 9 Secret of Survival

Chapter 10 The Supreme Sacrifice

Chapter 11 A Piece of Blue Sky

Chapter 12 Aftercourses

The Christian life is no fly-by-night fling but rather is rooted in the fabric of concrete reality. This book is concerned with the receiving and exercising of faith in God––and describes the pilgrimage of every man and woman.

The experiences of Abraham form the backdrop for this contemporary look at the dynamics of faith. Notice the parallel with modern man and woman:

– the swing of the pendulum from faith to doubt and back to faith again

– the inevitable sacrifices that must come if one is to follow personal destiny

– the risk of self acceptance and his place in the plan of God, conquering the fear of being thought different

The Christian life is not necessarily free from tension or exempt from strife. But the important thing is that this tension be harnessed as a creative force. The swing from enchantment to disenchantment and back to enchantment is bound to come, and the Christian through it all must maintain the spirit of obedience through which God may guide him or her.

Although rooted in the Bible, these chapters have a contemporary note and show an awareness of modern life. The illustrations reveal a wide reading and familiarity with the times. They will appeal to all kinds and conditions of humankind. Never dealing in generalities and obscurities, everything moves toward definite points and a clear outline.

The patriarch Abraham’s life was characterized by a dissatisfaction with settled ease in big cities. He looked for something beyond, something even more permanent. He never found it on earth, but he never stopped looking. A Piece of Blue Sky challenges us to step out by faith in Abraham’s caravan.

Preface

Toward the conclusion of the book that bears his name, Huckleberry Finn allows that if he had known what trouble and bother it was to write a book, he never would have started. But, of course, we all know that once he had started, he could not stop. That is the way it is with writing a book. That, we may suppose, is why Thomas Carlyle once complained of his current effort, This book! It consumes me like a Nessus’ shirt.

My own feeling is that if I had known what fun it is to get a book going, I would have worked harder earlier at the job. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, A book is something that everyone wants to have written, but no one wants to write. Once you start, however, you are hooked.

The pages that follow are the result of a series of sermons based on the life of Abraham, first preached in the Trinity United Methodist Church of Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1960’s. I am republishing this book because the topics remain relevant. Minor editorial changes have been made to update common terminology and time frames. I have learned, however, that there is more to writing a book than dusting off an old sermon series! There is in it what Carl Sandburg called Something crushed in the heartsblood of pain. It is by no breath, turn of the eye, or wave of the hand that salvation joins issue with death, and that is the order of the day if a book is to be written.

Son of man, can these bones live? is the question of the prophet, and it could well concern the cemetery in which old sermons are interred. The answer to the question of Ezekiel may only be found if one believes in the power of resurrection.

My own intellectual and spiritual migration has been from asking, "What does the Bible say? to What does the Bible mean?" Instead of being a pilgrimage from Egypt to the Holy Land, mine has been a circuitous journey; but along the way there have been oases when meaning has broken through the clouds.

I wish to acknowledge a special debt to Mr. Frank Corsaro for permission to use the title of his play, A Piece of Blue Sky.

1

A Tale of Two Cities

GENESIS 12:1–7

A braham is more than a patriarch for Christians. He is the founder of the Hebrews, the hero of the Muslims, and the son of the ancient Bedouins. He belongs to all people who subscribe to the belief in one God . In the course of the wanderings of his clan, he came to a beautiful city with a great tower (which still stands after thousands of years), a city that sat beside the Euphrates River, surrounded by well-irrigated fields. That city was Ur of the Chaldees.

Most people would have been satisfied to stop right there, but for Abraham there was a pull to keep going, so the clan kept going. They traveled north to the city of Haran, where the old patriarch of the clan, Terah, breathed his last. Surely there was a strong temptation to stay at the place where his father was buried, but something kept pushing him on. So he herded his livestock toward the Jordan River and passed over to a place called Shechem, where, we read, he builded an altar unto the Lord. This was not the end of his wanderings, but there is something symbolic in the building of an altar to the Lord as soon as he arrived in the new land, west of the Jordan River.

I would like to suggest that those wanderings of Abraham are like the wanderings of everyone. We all come up alongside Ur of the Chaldees with its impressive tower, its strategic location, its green fields, its crystal-clear river. We are tempted to settle for citizenship there. If we get past Ur to Haran, we are tempted once more to stop and stay. But there is also this tug to keep going.

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However, to be fair, we should consider the opportunities that are offered by these localities, and we will begin by taking a look at what Ur has to offer.

Abraham is known to history as a very wealthy man, but when he was a nomad, traveling from the desert to Canaan, he was anything but affluent. The Bedouins were little better off than gypsies, and sometimes they were known to steal and kill in order to maintain themselves. When the winter season had come in Mesopotamia, Abraham’s clan had migrated southward toward Ur. Their flocks were not free to graze anywhere, because many of the fields were privately owned. But there was considerable wild country, and there the flocks could forage for food. When Abraham and his people arrived at Ur, it must have been a great temptation to stay. True, the people at Ur worshiped the moon god, but what a way of life they had developed for themselves! Who would not have been tempted to stay there, even as servants, and live on the leftovers of that lavish life?

Some people never get past Ur. It looks good. It has a great tower. It has a strategic location. What more could you ask? Who cares about the kind of god they worship? Many marriages stop at Ur. He looks good. He has the best of connections. He is smart. He has a pleasing personality. What if he does live in a vacuum when it comes to values? Or she has sex appeal, the face of an angel, and no little talent. What difference does it make if she tends to be self-centered?

When it comes to choosing a vocation, it is very easy to stop at Ur. Ur is very attractive. It promises quick promotions and guarantees the best retirement. It offers quick tricks for seizing power. Ur does not hint what kind of people you have to please or how much freedom you will have to be yourself. We are all tempted to stop at Ur and buy what it has to offer.

Young nations have to decide whether they will keep going to their own unique destiny or stop the first time they have an attractive opportunity. Take the newer nations in Africa. The miraculous thing is that so many of them have had their chances to listen to so much sales propaganda and, after considering it well, have decided to move on.

William D. Patterson writes¹ of how the nation of Guinea, formerly under French control but now free, has pulled up alongside Marxism and looked it over. A fine radio station was set up for them, a printing press, a school to train technicians, a stadium for sporting events as well as political rallies. An airport was built. Motorized equipment was sent to them. The young president, Sekou Toure, was given the red carpet treatment.

After all this, the African nation decided to keep going toward its own destiny. The leader was a man of great magnetism and ability who was passionately dedicated to the idea of Africa for the Africans. Having struggled for years to get free of colonialism, he had no desire to see his country as a satellite. He had firsthand reports from his students in Marxist universities that their education was really indoctrination. Furthermore, the Africans are easy-going, spontaneous people, and they do not like