But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. -- Isaiah 43:1
It’s not an earworm.
Brain Jig, maybe – it’s a recurring thought that I have or keep
recognizing in what someone else says or some experience that I have. The reason I call it a jig is that things fit
together in it.
Did you ever know a person who made everything more
complicated and harder than it needed to be?
Have you ever been that
person? I can answer both questions in
the affirmative. In a way, following
Christ is challenging. It can be a serious
struggle, day after day, and so it is described as a battle and race. Yet, Jesus calls to those who are “weary and
heavy-laden” – some of us, as we talked about yesterday – and offers us rest
and a lighter load to bear.
In fact, our battle is to step aside and let the battle be
the Lord’s. We work hard to overcome the
mindset of the world and enter the rest of Christ. For years, beginning long before I
surrendered to that Holy Hunter who dogged my steps, my typical way of saying
good-bye was to say, “Take it easy”. I
still say it a lot. I might have
originally picked it up from the Jackson Browne/Eagles song that played about
once an hour on the AM radio in my orange Chevy back in ’72. It’s still good advice, but the paradox of
fighting for peace remains true.
We are stuck working out our “own salvation with fear and trembling” while God is “working in [us], both to will and to act for His good pleasure” (Philippians
2:12-13). Every time I read that, I feel
like saying, Make up your mind. Is it
me, or is it God? And the answer is – Yes,
that’s right. We will never enter Christ’s
rest unless we work, and we will never work our way into His love and His
grace.
We belong to the Lord.
He calls us by name, and we bear His name. If I look at my inadequacy and my failures, I
am afraid, and I feel that I need to try harder. Yet even I, as flawed and foolish as I am, I
am accepted in Christ. Here is my
Rock. Here I may stand, and the battle
is to believe it.
2 comments:
In fact, our battle is to step aside and let the battle be the Lord’s.
Along those lines is another: "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord.
There are times when we will to act, perhaps especially when we feel that there is some cosmic injustice we must right. But much of the time, no matter how we may feel about it, it isn't our job.
Having said that, there's a battle of cosmic injustice happening in my kid's room...
There are things over which we have been given dominion. I think the kid's room falls into that category.
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