November 30, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2.5)

“Stop trusting in mere humans, who have but breath in their nostrils. Why hold them in esteem?” (Isaiah 2.22)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

I have posted the two passages of scripture (Isaiah 2.5 and 2.22) to show the span of the spectrum of opportunity which God has allowed. God has done so not without reason nor without consequence. He has done so because God is love. It is a “hard” love which God has demonstrated is within His nature and character. It is a love which feels the highest of highs and lowest of lows from joy to despair. It is a love which those who are parents experience for their children and one over which they lament. In that regard they are not much different from God. By that, I am not intimating they are God nor a god but that their experience with loving their children are similar. Such love requires trust, belief, sacrifice and yes…loss. As much as “the angels of God in heaven rejoice when a sinner repents [or when one who was list is found]” (Luke 15.10), so, too, will God lament for those who remain lost. Be aware, mighty ones of God, those who are lost are not the ones who are not found (let that be a comfort for those still unfound in North Carolina and Tennessee due to Tropical Storm Helene) but those who refuse to be found and prefer the life of darkness. As in verse 2.22, “Though they still have a breath of life in their nostrils, they have chosen a life that shall not be esteemed.” If you care to see the angst of God in this situation brought before Isaiah, then you must read the intervening verses from 6-21 in chapter 2. Those descriptors will be repeated throughout the work of Isaiah to reaffirm the truth of what God has done, is doing and will do because of His great love. It begins with, continues with and endures with “a choice.” And what is the focus for Isaiah is all about God’s choice. Even though the people must choose, there would be no choice unless God first made the choice.

God’s choice to create life with freewill. Even as I sit here to reflect upon that statement, I admit my wondering on the expanse of freewill. Does every living thing have freewill. It is easy to talk about it in terms of human beings. Conscious, sentient beings have the ability to make choices over their own lives before, during and after the consequences of those choices are known. We see such characteristics in the animal kingdom as well. The greatest choices afforded in freewill is the choice to live or die. Who among us, however, had the choice to live? We were brought into being by the choice of someone else, ultimately by God. It is at this point I am very much affirmed of being pro-life over and against pro-choice. I do not agree in my thinking that pro-choice is an act of freewill simply because that conscious and sentient being has not taken into consideration the facts of life. For “that” action of intercourse, there is a consequence of bringing life into world. To take a life out of this world then becomes not an act of freewill but of judgment as if one usurps the place of God. For that Christ taught, “Judge not lest you be judged.” How the outcry of pro-choice individuals resounds “Don’t judge me!” (the echoes of the cry sound more like “My body, my choice.”) Who is it that they are truly sounding against? People? Lawmakers? Pro-lifers? Or is it God? Do they fear the presence of God in the decision they make to get themselves into a situation as well as out of it? Perhaps there may be some truth that they are railing against themselves as they are not fully in control and now must take desperate measures to gain control, if that is indeed what “control” means to them. Trust me, I am full aware that “all have sinned and fallen short.” We all make decisions without fully considering the consequences. But in all of that, that is not the nature and character of God because “God is love.” God just doesn’t love. God IS love. In the midst of these “equations” brought forth by both sides of the argument, what may well get lost is that only God creates life and He made the freewill decision to do so. Which means in the long run, God is also the only judge of that decision. The consequence is that God is a God of life not death. So, in the call to life one must consider the reality of death. Jesus said, “No greater love is there than this that a person would lay down their life for another.” Mind you, the life being offered is one who surrenders willingly for the sake of the other. Little wonder why God hated sacrifice of the living for those who continued to be dead at the center of who they are. The exercise of freewill, which God has chosen, is to honor the lives of others above self.

God made the choice to sustain life and create for it a good future. From the very beginning of human history, the provision for life has been given. Looking around us we see the provisions and marvel at the wonder, majesty, mystery and consequences of creating those provisions. The psalmist David sang often about it from looking into the heavens to see the sun, moon and stars (yes, some of those stars were planets but David did not have that scientific knowledge yet) and then to the earth in the depths of the rivers, lakes and seas. He saw it from the mountaintops to the deep valleys and all parts in between. All of those natural wonders were the consequences of God’s creative effort to provide for life, especially for human life. Imagine, if you will, that the universe exists as a consequence of God’s design to provide for us daily bread and drink, shelter and community, hope, faith and love. We are a part of that universe. This is the chosen way of God to demonstrate so great a love as this. God put His own nature into the mix of chaos to create the provision of the life He imagined as a reflection of Himself. Even to the extent of being distanced from one’s self there is a mutual attraction which binds us all together whether we like it or not, accept it or not. Even Satan, the cast out and fallen Lucifer, is bound by that connection and God had to make provision for that “loose” connection, too. Seriously, “what the Hell!” as my oldest daughter is want to declare. It isn’t easy but there has to be such balance even in our spiritual nature in order for life to exist and be provided for. At that point, the greatest provision is meaning and purpose. The greatest meaning and purpose exists in our spirit and not in our flesh. It is something beyond us and within us. Referring to the previous point in the paragraph above: Immanuel, God with us, is also understood as “God within us.” That is where the hard love, which is even beyond “tough love” exists and comes into reality. God provides and provisions the choice. He knows the choices He would prefer for us to make and the provisions are given to choose them but there is the “otherwise” as well. I believe this is what God lamented most when He looked at the earth in the days of Noah and saw the vile reality of dark human nature.

God chooses to redeem life. We are blessed with a God who is not absent. David exclaimed “there is no where I have gone where the evidence says ‘God is not here.’” (Psalm 139) In the midst of God’s choice to create life with freewill and the full provision to live out that life from “here to eternity,” He has also committed Himself to offer redemption. Why? God knows we are not well acquainted and fully knowledgeable of Immanuel, God within us. We do not always make the right choices so that only good things happen to good people and only bad things happen to bad people. That day will come when the reality of heaven and hell will be fully known and delineated. We have not come to that point in time. It may be coming soon and many will be disappointed in the revelation of that truth. It will be unavoidable. The day will come when the truth will be so evident that “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” By that confession, the sheep and the goats will be separated and sent to their respective pastures to live in all the days of their lives. It will be a day which God has been aware of from before the beginning. He has lived in the angst of it and, though knowing it is inevitable, has worked to lessen the number of lives that will be impacted by that “sin-fection.” God has put into place the “provision of redemption.” The greatest provision is His own Son who came into the world as Jesus of Nazareth. He shows us the consequence of freewill by choosing to take on human form from a fetus to an infant to a child to a teenager, to a young man and to a man whose earthly life was cut far too short. Yet, it happened for our own good and spiritual welfare so that the “provision of redemption” would be available to all who will believe in Him, confess their sins and profess Him as Lord and Savior by which He alone can show us “the way, the truth and the life” as God intended from beginning to end, an end without end.

In those two verses I mentioned at the start of this reflection, mighty ones of God and those who will choose to be mighty ones of God, we see the conclusion of walking in the light (verse 5) and the lament of those who choose otherwise (verse 22). In between, the condition of freewill is exposed as God allows the choice of living without redemption as well as living with a hope of redemption to exist. It isn’t easy being God but not impossible. It isn’t easy being human but not impossible. And as we stand on the precipice of Advent 2024, we are given the choice of living the impossible or accepting what is possible. I will stand with Joshua who toed the line of the Promised Land frontier and declared “As for me and my house, we will choose to serve the Lord our God!” How about you?

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.