between a sheet and a hard place

Sunday May 2nd, Acts 11: 4 Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: 5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.' 8 "I replied, 'Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' 9 "The voice spoke from heaven a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.' 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again. Peter found himself caught between a sheet and a hard place. That doesn’t sound bad until you put yourself in Peters place and realize that sheet contains everything objectionable in his limited world view. Peter found himself face to face with God’s expanded view of the kingdom. Peter has had a rough time of it. He has lived with Simon the tanner, touched and healed a dead Greek woman named Dorcus. Now God is continuing his education by once again showing him the expanse of God’s kingdom. Peter is also left trying to explain this to others when he is not so sure he understands it himself. Most of us, like Peter, when confronted with the expanse of God’s kingdom may at first say Wow. Then after a while we come to our senses and say, “but surely you don’t mean them?” It is one thing to expand our view of the horizon as far as we can see, it is quite another to expand it as far as God can see. Sometimes God has used a sheet to show his vision for the kingdom. Sometimes he just takes us up to the line we have drawn in the sand and tell us to step across it, and then leads us to do it again, and again and again and again until we begin to grasp just a part of the expanse of God’s love. Perhaps this was an inspiration for U2’s “No line on the horizon” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE)