GOD’S MIRACLE, NOT GOD’S MISTAKE

GOD’S MIRACLE, NOT GOD’S MISTAKE

A Durrell Discourse

For years now at Sunshine Cathedral, we have said (repeatedly, often, from pulpit and in print, in lessons and in liturgy), “You are God’s miracle and not God’s mistake.”

After years of using this phrase as a sacred mantra at Sunshine Cathedral, I recently am noticing it popping up on social media. At first, I felt a bit proprietary, as if no other person might have ever thought to string those words together in that order. But then I remembered Ecclesiastes’ wise counsel, “there is nothing new under the sun.” I might have heard it or something similar years before I thought the phrase a product of my own genius. And whether it was me, Zig Ziglar, Mary Baker Eddy or Krishna himself who coined the phrase, what matters is that it is true. I now want everyone saying it, and acting as if the phrase fell from heaven (as perhaps it did).

In my theology, God is really all there is. One Source, One Power, One Presence, One Substance...God is all and in all. That doesn’t mean that we always remember our divinity or that our every act or word is godly, but when we get caught in our dramas and fictions, that doesn’t change the reality that our essence is divine, and what is really Real is what we call God, and what is real about us must be part of God. So, we aren’t mistakes, we are God expressing.

The message of the Incarnation, for me, isn’t that God became human once, but that God expresses in, through, and as all that is, including you and me. Jesus, then, is my reminder that when we are most human, we express divine love.

If I’m part of God, then I am a miracle. If God is love and I am part of God, then my love is God’s love in action. I am, you are, we are God’s miracle and not God’s mistake: That isn’t a slogan to own, but a truth to share. If you see Sunshine folk posting it, feel free to share. It’s a message that needs to be universally embraced.

No matter where you heard it first, I hope you hear it now - you are God’s miracle and not God’s mistake. I especially want my Queer siblings to embrace this truth. We are the Rainbow people of a Rainbow God. Our lives and our love are miracles, never a mistake. Spread the word!

(Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins, Senior Minister, Sunshine Cathedral)