Several days after the 1989 devastating 6.9 earthquake in San Francisco area, a young boy was seen rocking and swaying on the school playground. His principal asked him if he was okay, and the boy said yes, I am moving like the earth, so if there is another earthquake, I won’t feel it. He wanted to prepare himself for another shaking of the ground. We do the same in our lives especially when comes bad news on the phone, and when it rings again, we are quick to say, what else now? This sounds like a predictable behavior. Holy Scriptures are full of instances where God’s people were in these predictable behaviors. I will give an example: God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, and when things started getting tough in the desert on the way to freedom, they started craving for Egyptian food! Onions and Garlic, and for us, it would have been pizza, fried chicken and hamburgers! They complained for a piece of their old life of slavery. This is predictable behavior. God wasn’t impressed! We all fall into these predictable behaviors when we use our natural lenses. God invites us to use His lenses, to see the world as He sees it. The lesson from the prophet Micah, is that God wants to reason with us! God put out a court case before His people: What have I done to you to deserve your dishonor? Have I been unkind to you? God wants to teach Israel and us, not to focus at the intensity of our human experience however sad it may be, but rather to focus on him who can change everything. It is my hope that we will discover what our tendencies are. Which one are we pushing towards? Comforts of life or trusting God?
It is our nature to want to be at the point of comfort in life. There is nothing wrong with that. The truth is that being in right relationship with God does not guarantee that we will always stay at the point of comfort. There will be ups and downs. Following Jesus will be demanding, we would have to sacrifice things in our lives and die to certain things. Israelites learned that sometimes when they were desperately seeking to be at the point of comfort, it came with a cost; a cost that can jeopardize our relationship with God. Like that California student, it’s natural we don’t want to feel the ground beneath us shaking and moving, but rather, we should focus in trusting God within our crisis. Jesus wanted to take us much further than our nature is capable of reaching; much further than our discomforts, with faith, hope and prayer. This past weekend, there were fears and tensions in the city of Memphis...We are called to faith, hope and prayer. The question is: In what way can we move with Jesus, putting on God’s lenses and God’s spiritual armor of protection, so we can avoid the pitfalls of predictable behaviors?
Bishop N.T Wright reminded us in one of his books that these blessings called beatitudes are not telling people to behave properly or try harder to live like this. They are saying that people who are already like that are in great shape, they should be happy and celebrate. With our natural lenses, we see that mourners often go uncomforted, the meek don’t inherit the earth, those who long for justice frequently take that longing to the grave. With our natural lenses, we also notice greed and pride in others, as well as in ourselves, we see images that bring fear in our hearts and Jesus is saying:
I came to take that from you, to show you what you were meant to be! This is an upside-down world. Jesus is saying that with his work, it starting to come true, with us, through the power of the Cross. Allow Jesus take you places you have never been before; use God’s lenses, walk by faith where few things are certain. We joke, says my friend retired Professor Mark Joy, that the only things certain in life are death and taxes!
Those who have lived a little longer tend to understand the human search for meaning, or the riddles of life, but we all return to the basic point of comfort: our pursuits, what are we after… The Jewish Bible is full of these phrases: “
Blessed is He who is like this…” But this is my choice for today: “
Blessed are they that put their trust in God.” Ps. 2: 12. It is an invitation for us to walk further in God’s ways and with divine wisdom and understanding. Now sometimes life may seem like the ground is shaking and moving, but first know that as long as God is with you, nothing can harm your soul when you are spiritually holding Jesus’ hand and walking with Him by faith…
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, take our hand, we want to begin trusting you continually, to walk with you at all times, to follow into your steps, because we understand that it is where our life is.
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment