It's never too late for a John Dowd story and sermon ... even if it is about Christmas and moonshiners

Only my father would start a sermon about Christmas with a story about a well known moonshiner from Eastern Tennessee. Is it too late to post? Nah ... never a bad time for a John Dowd story.

I don't know where he got all of his information for his many stories that accompanied his sermons on Sundays. He wrote them long before the internet came into his life. He was a voracious reader. Even when computers and wireless communication did come along, all he ever did was use it to play Solitaire. And so, here goes ... I have no idea what year he wrote this sermon, but he retired from the pulpit in the early 1990's.

'He came to us. Luke 1:26-38.'

"In the the late 1800s in the eastern part of Tennessee, there was a famous moonshiner known as Big Haley. The woman's real name was Mahala Mullins, but since she weighed somewhere around 500 pounds, 'Big Haley' was not an inappropriate name.

"Big Haley and her sons ran a reliable operation. They were renowned for the quality of their product. They didn't dilute their moonshine and were known to deal honestly. That fact, coupled with the problems of arresting a mountain clan, caused local government officials pretty much to leave them alone. However, a newly-elected sheriff did once attempt to arrest Mahala and make a name for himself. The judge who signed the arrest warrant just smiled and told the sheriff to be sure to bring her in.

"The sheriff and his deputies had no trouble finding Mahala's cabin. He knocked on the cabin door, entered, and informed Mahala she was under arrest. What he discovered, though, was Mahala was bigger than the cabin's doorway. After some futile effort, he decided not to arrest her after all. When the judge later asked the sheriff about Mahala, the officer complained that, 'She's catchable, but not fetchable.'

"There are some things in life that are like that. They may be catchable but in the vernacular of the mountains, they are not fetchable. Suppose you and I had never heard about Jesus Christ, but we wanted to know about God? How would we do it? It's a problem. We could look at nature to draw our conclusions, but nature presents a mixed bag. Certainly there is the abundance of soil, the faithfulness of the seasons, not to mention the breath-taking beauty and amazing complexity of all that lives and moves and has its being. But there is also cruelty in nature and destruction and terror. Is that what God is like? I hope not.

"We could turn to sacred literature. All the world's great religions seek to describe God in high, exalted writings, but they were written by human beings - people like you and me. They may have been religious geniuses, but how can we know that their testimony is true? The little girl sits in the corner drawing a picture of God. 'But no one knows how God looks,' someone says to her. 'They will when I've finished,' she proclaims. Who's to say she is wrong? Her guess is as good as anyone else's, if all we have to go on is human intuition.

"Truly God is neither catchable nor fetchable. Can clay describe its potter? Can fish do justice to the one who changes the water in their aquarium? How can tiny human brains that cannot understand electricity or produce a cure for the common cold ever hope to comprehend the wonder of the eternal Creator God? We cannot. Fortunately, we do not have to. Why? Because He has come to us. As folks in business would say, that is the bottom line when it comes to Christmas. God has come to us!!!

HE CAME TO A HUMBLE MAIDEN IN AN OBSCURE VILLAGE NAMED NAZARETH. Not to the philosophers or the Caesars or to the mighty warlords, but to a humble maiden. How extraordinary. No wonder the cynical people of this world reject such talk as nonsense. The way God came to us tells us the nature of God......"

My father was saying we can find God everywhere ... even in an 'unfetchable but catchable' moonshiner.