Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

-- R. Burns Epistle to a Young Friend

Friday, June 17, 2016

Humble Pie



All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your saints shall bless you! --Psalm 145:10


The world that has rejected God spends most of its time condemning Him.  The news focuses on senseless acts of violence, accidents, and disasters of one kind or another.  The unbeliever asks constantly why evil exists.  Every utopian scheme from communes to eugenics to fascism and socialism attack God as less than good and His order as something flawed that can be fixed by the limited, largely ignorant, yet endless arrogant creature called man.

There is much encouraging humility and meekness, especially, in the words of Jesus, because humility helps us to cope with all that we do not understand in the world.  People seem quick to suggest that we should not judge one another, yet we are often guilty of judging God, of thinking that somehow we know more than He does.  We think we know what He is trying to do.  People that can’t balance their own checkbooks or control their appetites and actions in light of easily foreseeable consequences are, nonetheless, certain that God is “doing it wrong”. 

This is something with which every saint has struggled.  What makes God’s holy ones different is not that they know so much more, rather they’ve given up what they know must be wrong. 

God is Good.  In the end, His works always testify of His goodness, His faithfulness, and of His enduring, overwhelming love. 

2 comments:

julie said...

Amen, Mushroom.

Our society is always quick not simply to judge God, but to condemn Him. truly every friday is Good Friday; every week, the Passion is played out a million times over. How many Christians spend it in the role of Judas? In my study this week, we were discussing the betrayals of the Apostles. Not just of Judas, but of the others as well, particularly Peter, who fell asleep when they were asked to remain awake, and who denied Him out of fear for their lives. it dawned on me that part of what made Judas' betrayal so terrible was that, perhaps more than the other Apostles, he really understood that Jesus was not going to be merely a worldly hero whose rise would put them all into positions of worldly power; rather, there was something far more vertical going on - which he rejected, utterly.

I am often Peter; God help me for those times when I am Judas, too.

mushroom said...

That is true. We are all struggling with those guys within us all the time.