When the wineglass shattered, rejoicing ensued. Much, much rejoicing. That shattering glass was our last ditch effort to get some part of my daughter’s science experiment to work, and after hours and hours of effort and frustration, a short celebration was very much in order.
The experiment was supposed to be relatively easy: use sound to break wineglasses at their resonant frequency. We pummeled a variety of glasses with sound for hours and hours one afternoon with no success. We tried wineglasses; we tried glasses without stems; we even tried a mug. We tried not to get frustrated as the failures mounted.
After nightfall, we set up one more glass, and with the loudspeaker and amplifier cranked to 11, the glass exploded.
As you can tell, we were pleased with the results.
Are you kidding?!?!? We danced, we slapped high fives, and we squealed and shouted so loudly in the detached garage that my wife heard us from inside the house with all the doors and windows closed tight. And that was for a science experiment that finally succeeded after hours of trying.
Now consider how often God’s message of love and mercy and redemption and peace gets presented, and then rejected, by one person. I sat in church for years like a stout mug, with that message bouncing off my thick head.
Just between 1st grade and the end of high school alone, I probably sat through about 1,000 sermons and Sunday school-type classes. And who knows how many hundreds of thousands of times God tried to get my attention during the rest of my life when I wasn’t even near a church. How many times did I stubbornly resist?
How many times have you?
When His message finally resonated with me, I broke down and humbly admitted I needed Him. Apparently, when that happens, Jesus says “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).
So if my daughter and I get excited enough to dance and holler when one glass breaks after trying for hours, imagine what the celebration in Heaven is like after years and years, and thousands upon thousands of attempts to get a person to take that step of repentance.
“Rejoicing” might be an understatement. Dancing, high fives, and shouts of joy are probably just the beginning. The celebration might be downright raucous.
Have you given those angels something to celebrate?