August 19, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“The word of the Lord Almighty came to me. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I AM very jealous for Zion; I AM burning with jealousy for her.‘” (Zechariah 8.1-2)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Are there things in your life which cause you to say “I can’t live without it!”? You are so attached to them emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, financially and physically that it would be hard to separate yourself from them. Some may even go so far as to say, “I would die without out it (or them)!” If there is anything in the world and on earth that defines life it may well be the desire for “chosen-ness.” All life has this desire in common: to be worthy of belonging to someone and to be desired by another. Perhaps the true reality of the problem which Satan, the cast out Lucifer, presented to Adam and Eve in the Garden can be described is “God doesn’t really value you, find worth in you, chooses you, needs you, wants you and hasn’t really chosen you.” Will you take a moment to let that sink in to your thinking and just consider that there is truth to this? Yes, we know from the teachings of Paul to the community of faith believing in Jesus as the Christ which existed in Rome/the Roman Empire this treatise of spiritual truth, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8.38-39) It seems impossible to divest ourselves as Christ followers from this stated reality. We count on its validity for the very hope it provides to endure life in this world on this earth as we dwell between the crucifixion and resurrection and His promised return and ultimate justification of God’s love for us evidenced in Jesus as the Christ. The reality of it is the truth that God’s love never changes. Quite possibly, God’s love is the most powerful force of authentic nature in all the universe and beyond. Without love would God even exist?

But hear the conundrum which is proposed by Satan to Adam and Eve. Genesis 3.4-5 captures the proposal which is contrary to the truth of God’s stated love for His creation. It says, “‘You will not surely die,’ the Serpent told her. ‘For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” This proposal is placed against the very affirmation which God has spoken following the creation of the human race in its infancy from the midst of the creation of the heavens and the earth. As the sixth day of creation was coming to a close, God declared “And God looked upon all that had been created and declared it was very good.” (Genesis 1.31) Up to that point everything was good. It was meaningful, purposeful, functional and fruitful. It spoke of compatibility, community, viability and a fullness of life which supported the rest of life in its created form. Perhaps we could even say “it had no choice in the matter to be any other way apart from the way it was created.” But with the creation of human beings in the image of God, reflections of His nature, character and purpose (which is LOVE) an added layer of “good” existed called “very good.” The presence of human beings was the ultimate expression of “choice” by God to bring creation into its fullness. God chose “us.” By His nature of love which can only be known in “other” terms, God chose “us” to exist and share in the joy of His salvation. Trust me, creation itself is a “salvation” story. God redeemed the chaos and brought to light its true meaning and purpose. It was never intended to be “in the dark” as if eyes were closed with no hope of seeing its way through to some other reality. When God chose to speak into the darkness, life “came to life” as if eyes were opened to a new reality, maybe a forgotten reality, and saw again what it meant to be alive. It was the separation from that reality which created the chaos. But “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus through whom all that was and is was created.” In the words of Billy Graham, “The Holy Bible is this: a true love story of God for His creation and especially for His people.” In the beginning, we were all “His people” and we remain so to this day and forever.

So, it stands to reason that God who loves all of this and us so greatly would be jealous for anything that He has made and is His. He would not want to surrender His hold on it. It does not mean He wants to smother it, imprison it, hold it back nor enslave it. He wants it to abide in the freedom of love which would always, as God did and does, chooses what is right and good. Yet, Satan’s desire was to create a schism of realities to depict that God’s jealous nature was one that sought to create a separation between them. It would be the summation of Satan of such a desire to be apart that unity and oneness was never God’s true intent. The assumption would be that the blessing of the sixth day was just lip service. Doubting the “lie” would create an anger from God that would destroy creation. What a troubled soul Satan was and is. So angry with God, His creator, for exercising the corrective measures of what love must entail and putting him away from the things he had loved (his meaning and purpose of leading heaven in worship), he set himself to be God’s enemy and thus the enemy of all creation including humanity. He does not have the power to create life, but he found that “singing a different tune” could produce a discordant measure in the symphony of love. Such a cacophony of discordant measures we can call sin. It will not separate us from the love of God, but it may allow for creation to forget itself and lose its way. Ultimately, it may allow for a different choice to be considered other than the one which has been chosen for us by a loving God.

That battle continues today. The symphony of death, destruction, doom and gloom is being played with such precision that only a discerning ear tuned by faith can recognize its hypnotizing disharmony. Will we have such faith to hear and listen to the truth which exists as a light in the darkness which the darkness can never consume? Will we hear the beat of one whose heart drums fervently, even feverishly, for us and for all creation to be one with Him? You see, Satan proposed that “eating the apple” would be us just like God. If there are only gods, then what is the purpose of creation. What a competition, and we know of competitive spirits, might exist if we all thought of ourselves as gods striving to be God. And that competition existed between God and Lucifer. We know how that has gone. We know where it will conclude. In between, we know that God so loves us that He is jealous for our lives and good will. He not only has created us but desires to redeem us, reconcile us and reform us into the likeness that was our first look. Our eyes can be opened again to the authentic “good old day” as when it was all new and “very good.” Isn’t that what we truly desire, mighty ones of God? It is what God desires, too, and now on a much grander scale than on “that day.” And it isn’t only just a desire of God, it is a “burning” desire. It is that desire we will reflect upon tomorrow. Until then, shalom!

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.