Trusting God
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Third Week of Advent
Isaiah 54:7-10
“For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; but with enduring love I take pity on you … Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, my love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken,” says the Lord, who has mercy on you.
Domestic violence victims often experience the “honeymoon” effect, when for awhile their violent partner feels remorse and becomes better-than-ever. But that sweet period of grace between them grows ever shorter if no work gets done on deeper issues, usually issues of abandonment.
However that coming collapse is not easy to predict. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Sometimes it kills people. And a person who desperately wants their marriage to work, wants their kids to thrive rather than suffer through divorce, and feels like they might be letting God down if they can’t keep things going will simply close their eyes.
That person needs what is brilliantly called a “reality check.” However they can, they need to get up in the air above their relationship and see it more clearly, look at it from other perspectives, and listen to God instead of their own guilty conscience.
Counseling helps. Friends help. Family helps. Sometimes. Other times, all those folks take sides and just muddy the waters. Their perspectives are just as skewed as the victim’s.
Do we have the same trouble with how we see God? What about this confession from God of his anger? Is God a perpetrator, and are we the victims? I don’t think so. But to many of us, who haven’t developed a lifelong confidence in God because we just didn’t grow up that way, this passage is scary. How can I trust God’s word in the future when he’s been so angry in the past? Does he really mean what he says: “Though the mountains leave their place, my love shall never leave you?”
I trust God much more now that I am better at knowing my own polluted rebelliousness, my own failures, my own selfishness, my own Sin. I can see how God really has no business trusting me, and when I don’t trust him I am just projecting on God my own shame. That’s not fair, but it’s convenient. I might do it less as I grow older, but it still comes to mind.
Isaiah understood this, that wise old man who had been through so much. At the beginning of his ministry God came to him in a cloud of dust and Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me, I am undone!” His mantel of self-protection and self-righteousness burned up in that moment of maturity, and then he could say to God, “Here am I, send me.” And God did.
Thank you, Lord, for letting me say, “I don’t trust you.” And thank you for not listening. Please turn my eyes back around toward myself and let me see what you’ve been patient with, what you’ve endured, what you’ve loved. I am the untrustworthy one. You are so good. And if I let you, you’ll make me good too. Teach me all my days.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2016/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1532
