Connect the Dots… Reveal Your Faith
Psalm 100
MATTHEW 17: 1-9
FEBRUARY 15, 2026 TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY
In his play, ‘Dear Jack, Dear Louise,’ playwright Ken Ludwig retells the story of his parents World War 2 romance that began with letters written from one coast to the other. She was in New York City and he was in the Army at a base in Oregon. They had never met nor spoken over the phone with each other when they started to write letters … at first just to have someone to communicate with but slowly but surely, they started to know each other … like each other … and without ever meeting well they fell in love. They connected the dots as they learned more and more about each other during the challenging times of the Second World War.
Ludwig’s play tied in with some recent conversations in our Wednesday night Bible study along with the all too rapid approach of the Lenten Season of 2026 leading me to consider our relationship with God. Something I often think about. It has me thinking about how we take the information we have received in our life to connect us with Jesus Christ and then how we use that to reveal our faith or how we disconnect from it all.
It’s like one of those classic ‘connect the dot’ puzzles … I am sure that you all remember them. You are given a sheet of paper that has a series of numbers spread out all over the sheet with each number given a dot. These days I need a magnifying glass to read the numbers. Sometimes there are lines offering some insight into what the final drawing will be. It is also a learning tool for children – who like any other connect the dot puzzle solver must start with the number 1 and then move along in sequence 1 then 2 then 3 … well I think all of you know what’s next … well, it would be four just in case.
So, yes … I can almost see God in this situation as the Master Puzzle Creator. And, no I can’t explain why God just didn’t implant a faith-control device in every human mind so that we would just obey God in everything we do in life … that we would read Scripture with regularity … that we would excitedly and joyfully rush to every worship opportunity that we have so that we can be closer to God and that we especially bring our children to those services because that faith-control device is beeping and buzzing and getting children connected with God is clearly a God-priority. That God faith-control device would remind us to chat regularly with God in prayer and then of course there are those daily life responsibilities that God expects from the faithful, which would be easily facilitated if God had implanted those devices into God’s human creations … things like feed the hungry, provide clothing and housing for the poor, visiting and caring for the prisoners although if we all had faith-control devices I would think that there wouldn’t be any of those. And, of course we would be welcoming to every other human being.
Perhaps that is the first dot in God’s puzzle since we don’t have those devices implanted in us. God did provide a textual guide into God’s thinking thanks to a collective group of individuals whose faith vocation was to create a written text, the Bible, for the faithful to follow. Most of you remember that in the beginning when the Bible talks about the beginning … God declares that ALL HUMANS male and female are ALL created in God’s Image. God hinting … rather clearly I think … that God expects his human creation to treat, love, welcome, respect, and honor every other living breathing human being because ALL HUMANS male and female are ALL created in God’s Image.
Of course, not everyone is good at connect the dot puzzles … and we all know that a signficant percentage of the human population chooses to DIS God at every opportunity. Just check out the nightly so-called entertainment TV schedule if you had any doubts.
God in God’s desire to bring every human back to God never stops trying … God believes that the diversity of human creation should be included equally amongst the faithful. Remember that first dot … ALL HUMANS CREATED EQUALLY IN THE IMAGE of GOD. Doesn’t make us gods … but God wants us to embrace, adopt and fully get the message from Psalm 100 … SHOUT TRIUMPHANTLY TO THE LORD … who? ALL THE EARTH … not just some small segment in one corner of God’s creation.
That word ALL is frequently noted in Scripture … LOVE ALL of your neighbors … CARE FOR ALL with MERCY … and the next phrase from this Psalm, which again is reflective of the God-driven connect the dots puzzle for living as God expects is this SERVE THE LORD with CELEBRATION!!! Mmm interesting that we can go back to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible to discover the clear directions that God expects us to SERVE OTHERS even total strangers rather than to enrich ourselves or gain power at the expense of folks we don’t like or who we don’t mind stomping all over to get our own gains. Jesus clarifies this God expectation in Matthew 25.
Last week, I asked the question of those of you who were in church … ‘do you remember when you discovered God and Christ? When you effectively changed your life from a world-focused sycophant to a Jesusian?’ Well I might not have phrased it like that but I do think that the rejection of Jesus’ directives, which are all part of God’s connect the dot to heaven puzzle does make one a world-focused sycophant whose very definition is to take actions that harm others to gain personal advantage.
So, do you remember when the dots became connected for you? When God’s reality … God’s love … God’s everlasting and I do mean everlasting expectations or we might call ETERNAL LIFE matter more to you than what individuals in the world want you to do, say, or think?
Lent is coming … on Ash Wednesday I will say the words … REPENT and OBEY THE GOSPELS as I apply ashes to the foreheads of friends and of strangers. We then travel through 40 days of opportunity … to reacquaint ourselves with God … to reject the world if we have been too embracing of the world to the level that we reject Jesus’ teaching … or if we have rejected God’s expectations so that we can be part of some cruel worldly club that attempts to separate, divide, conquer others so that we can have power or riches LENT is the perfect time to fix our personal disconnect with the Holy.
Have you connected all the dots that God has provided to create the image of Jesus Christ that you need so that you accept Him as Savior … Lord … Prince of Peace … Rabbi … Teacher … God with us? Is the Holy Spirit part of your journey or are the talking heads on TV actually your Holy Spirit because you spend more time with them than in God’s Word?
Today is the day the Christian Church celebrates the essential bridge of our calendar between Epiphany and Christmas and the reflective season of Lent. Today is the day we remember when the disciples perhaps had the ultimate aha moment … Christ revealed as divine … Christ glorified as the one song goes SHINING LIKE THE SUN … the Son of God!
On that mountaintop, the presence of Moses and Elijah verifies that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament … God shouts out ‘THIS IS MY SON WHOM I DEARLY LOVE. I AM VERY PLEASED WITH HIM! LISTEN TO HIM!” Another dot in the faith-journey puzzle … WAKE UP FOLKS … LISTEN TO JESUS!!
The disciples we read were filled with awe and who wouldn’t be having heard GOD’s booming voice … but Jesus calmly and assuredly once again told them “DO NOT BE AFRAID.” It’s like the moment in the storm on the Sea of Galilee … the repetitiveness … the lessons from God … from CHRIST … take me on, I am God’s Son … Listen to me … DO NOT BE AFRAID to REJECT THE WORLD … see me for who I am … the one the prophets told you about … the world’s MESSIAH, WONDERFUL COUNSELOR, MIGHTY GOD, ETERNAL FATHER … and PRINCE OF PEACE … the One God has sent to bring you home. All you have to do is actually and truly BELIEVE and CHANGE.
Friends you need to connect the dots … complete the picture … discover God’s truth not some occasional three letter word that you toss out. CHANGE is ESSENTIAL and that is why God has attempted to offer us the means to see what lies beyond the world. To understand that we need to be transformed and to carry Christ’s light down off the mountain and into the valleys of the real world we live in where there is human need, which God calls us to step up and care for. Where there are struggles … our personal struggles with fear, sin and distraction always remembering as John wrote that there is no fear in God’s perfect love.
The disciples witnessed Moses, Elijah, and Jesus as God called out God’s love for God’s Son but in the end they were left with Jesus, the Son of God … puzzle finished … God’s intended picture for humanity to embrace … ALL of HUMANITY … CREATED EQUALLY in GOD’s IMAGE … CREATED to LOVE EACH OTHER … CARE FOR EACH OTHER ESPECIALLY WHEN WE FIND OTHERS HURTING and BROKEN.
To realize as the psalmist declared … We are His people … the sheep of His own pasture. Thank Him! Bless His name! Because the Lord is Good and his faithful love lasts forever … generation after generation.
So, back to that play … ‘Dear Jack, Dear Louise.’ Louise an actress and Jack an Army doctor. They discovered their hearts through their letters … they discovered that a stranger was so much more … a person to fall in love with to spend a lifetime with. The playwright’s parent’s love story.
But what about you … how does your life offer those you communicate with the story of your walk with Jesus. Are your words, your actions, and your life story able to connect the dots to that moment when God changed your life … when Jesus became your Savior … when the Holy Spirit became your guide. It’s something to think about as we enter the season of Lent … do you reflect Christ … can others find God through you … we all need to work on this … ASH WEDNESDAY is hours away … are you prepared to REPENT and FOLLOW THE GOSPELS of JESUS CHRIST.
Connect the dots because they will reveal your faith or lack thereof. God’s love wants to embrace us all … I pray you want to embrace God and serve our Lord with celebration! AMEN