Tuesday, June 27, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Playing in God’s throne room
Abram was very rich, as was Lot. Their herdsmen fought because they needed more land. Lot chose the whole Jordan plain, and Abram stayed in the land of Canaan.
This is just the beginning of the problems. First Lot runs into Sodomites, and then Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac to the Lord.
God sees Lot’s catastrophe in the Jordan plain and in response to Abram’s request, offers to forgive, or at least not kill the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, although he eventually does kill them. Later, when Abraham ties his son Isaac to the stone and prepares for the holocaust, God stops him. Again, his forgiveness of man’s sin overcomes his need for sacrifice.
In Plough Magazine, Harro Preiss wrote …
Children are willing to forgive almost limitlessly. At the same time, it would never occur to a child that the forgiving love of his father and mother might come to an end if he were disobedient too many times. Taken together, these two elements comprise a package of perfect trust. If we would be willing, again and again, to forgive without hesitation the failings and shortcomings of people we interact with daily, we would be less afraid and would once again dare to live quite practically in a fresh new beginning of the childlike spirit.
It’s when you see this effortlessness in adults that is amazing to me. Adults “know” better. We adults develop special skin to protect ourselves and keep others out, because they have hurt us before and might hurt us again. Children develop this skin too, but it takes awhile, and until it’s thick and impervious they are still a bit more like God than their mothers and fathers.
Because God forgives endlessly and without favorites. His rain falls on the just and the unjust. Mr. Harro concludes his thoughts about God’s childlikeness , or rather children’s God-like-ness:
Children love the light. They do not like darkness. They hunger for life and thirst for light. They have no joy in the things of darkness. A true child loves the light.
There is no reason for us not to live this way. Loving light means turning away from evil, assuming the best, refusing to see what everyone else seems to see sometimes, smiling. Thirsting for light means being gentle, hardly ever honking the horn of my car, looking into the eyes of as many people each day as I can manage, breathing deep after my amygdala kicks my anger up a notch, just to get it down again.
He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord. He who walks blamelessly and does justice. Who thinks the truth in his heart and slanders not with his tongue. Who harms not his fellow man. Who accepts no bribe against the innocent.
We know people who live this way. We try to live this way ourselves. In these days we can be as children before God, and he will brush away our tears and lay his hand gently on the top of our heads.
He who does these things shall never be disturbed.
(Genesis 13, Psalm 15, John 8, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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