(Psalms 119:89-90 NKJV) Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven. (90) Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides.
My routine on work days is to leave nice and early so I have time to read in the parking lot before I start work. Feeling rushed or anxious blocks me from experiencing the presence of God as I read his words. There is something about the quiet of the morning, that time which sometimes escapes us where everything is slow enough to have a powerful awareness that God is indeed “there.”
As I was sitting in my car reading a few mornings ago, the irony of what I was doing struck me. Out of the twenty or so people I work with, I was very probably the only one who “consulted” God or was interested in what God had to say about life.
How foreign it would be to the men I work with to read the Bible.
Think how strange that is. God created us; God sent a Redeemer; God “wrote a Book” giving us his perspective on life, and we are not interested. And many Christians. . .my associate at a previous church was upset with me because I wanted him to read through the Bible. He never had. Here is a minister of the gospel who had never read the whole Book. You know what he told me. “What’s the big deal?”
What this is not!
This is not, please hear me, this is not a “look how spiritual I am” something or other. The reality of the situation just struck me. “Wow, I could have had a V8” kind of thing. The majority of people in this world, the majority of God’s human creation, take no time whatsoever to hear what God has to say.
The majority of people on this planet live without taking forever into consideration. Maybe for fleeting moments when someone dies, or some crisis. I remember a young man I work with telling me shortly after “9-11” how he and his wife had attended church the past two or three weeks. It took me a minute to understand what he was saying, but the terrorist attack made him think ever so briefly about eternity and he wanted to make some sort of God connection.
Sometimes I feel as if we as the human race stand on the edge of a precipice, and we are like children playing next to a busy highway and can’t understand our parents’ concern for our safety.
I am not speaking of a spirit of fear.
I am speaking of reality as God would reveal to us if we would happen to pay attention. Heaven, hell, life that is like a vapor, poof, you’re gone, outa’ here, and where do we land.
We are so in love with God’s creation that we disregard his redemption. More irony. Creation track — wonderful. Redemption track/forever mode — well. . .
We love our homes and lawns, birds, outdoors, fishing, protecting the land, vacations in exotic parts of the world. All God’s stuff he has given us to enjoy life. And we do except we leave the Gift-giver out. Don’t have time to consider God, let alone sit quietly before him and hear what he has to say.
But if we do. My, oh, my.
The wonder of the ride if we let God whoosh us away to another century. I just finished reading Nehemiah in the Old Testament. The dynamics of victory and defeat in following God’s plan. Fear, faith, build the wall, anger your enemies, endure their ridicule and threats. But what did it mean? The ridicule and threats meant that the enemy was seeing the success of God’s people. How should ridicule and threats be sometimes viewed? As a sign of our progress toward the will of God.
That’s the way it was over 2,000 years ago, and that is the way it is now. Truth, woven through the centuries, in and out of the lives of very imperfect people. It’s like we have insight into the mind of God. Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. And we don’t have time to turn a page or two?
