ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

 TU’APULELULU MA’ASI 12, 2026

SIOSIUA 5-8; MATIU 4:1-11 

What do you do when the thing that God is calling you to do seems absurd?

Ko e ha ho’o me’a ‘e fai kapau ‘oku ngali kehe ‘a e me’a ‘oku ui koe ‘e he ‘Otua ke ke fakahoko?

It really is true that God's thoughts are not like our thoughts and his ways are very different from our ways.

I sat in my chair during a difficult and painful recovery from a surgery I had hoped to avoid. I was so weak that I could barely get out of that chair. I sat there doing nothing because medications had scrambled my brain enough that I couldn't do the writing I thought God had called me to do. It seemed absurd that at the moment of what I thought was my greatest gospel influence, I had been weakened almost to immobility and my world had shrunk to this chair in our loft in Philadelphia. On a human level, it didn't make any sense. I knew God wasn't toying with me. I knew him to be present, faithful, and right in every way. But I was impressed with the seeming absurdity of the moment.

Having read through the biblical narrative over the course of my life, I am tempted to write a book called Divine Absurdities. Please don't misunderstand the title. I don't think that God, in the complete perfection of his wisdom, ever thinks, says, or does anything absurd. But there are moments when God asks us to do something that, at a human level, seems absurd; that is, it's so hard for us to make sense of it that it leaves us confused or a bit scared. Biblical faith calls us to persevere through what may seem absurd and to hold on to our belief that God is holy and wise, that all of his ways are good, right, and true. If you stop at the absurd, you will abandon God's call and turn and run the other way.

Joshua 6 invites us to witness one of those seemingly absurd moments. God calls his children not to attack thick-walled Jericho with military strategy but to parade around it for seven days. On a human level, this doesn't make any sense. It seems like an act of military suicide. But God has a plan. On the seventh day, after the seventh time around the city, the Israelites blow their trumpets and scream at the top of their lungs. The walls collapse and the city is sacked. God's plan was to give his children a victory that they could not take credit for and, in so doing, to instill in them the belief that he would be present with them and that they would fight their battles in the promised land in his almighty power. The absurd was not absurd, but rather a gift of God's grace and glory.

The biblical narrative marches toward another moment that seems absurd. It seems absurd that the entire hope of humanity would rest on God becoming a man, living a perfect life, dying a substitutionary death, rising from the dead, and ascending in victory to sit at the right hand of the Father. But it wasn't absurd; it was the perfect plan, conceived before the earth began. By faith we embrace the plan, God-in-the-flesh, the ultimate gift and giver of grace.