Skip to main content

God's Love...

             But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—  with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. (Psalm 103:17-18)

 

           One of the themes that recurs in my stories is that there is more than one kind of magic. I know some Christians who would object to the word “magic,” saying that all magic is demonic, but they might see nothing wrong with looking at a verse like this and thinking of the Lord’s love and His righteousness as being something that God adds to the lives of those who are faithful, and their descendants. Its whole purpose is to produce the happiness and security of all those involved, so that nothing bad will ever happen. And if the children or children’s children happen to turn out other than as expected, they assume someone did something bad. In other words, while they hold up a cross against anyone who mentions the word “magic,”  they treat God’s love as if it were magical.

            I’m not suggesting that this passage isn’t true. I am suggesting that how it is true is not necessarily how some people think. The idea of magic is that if you do X, Y, and W but not Z, the results will be whatever you sought. If you are praying every day, going to church on Sunday, and giving 10% of your income, and not doing the sex, drugs, and rock & roll bit, that does not guarantee that you’ll earn $250,000/year or that your children and grandchildren will never give you  a moment’s anxiety. Those are examples of magical thinking.

            So, what good does having God’s love and righteousness do? It gives  us access to Him, so that when things don’t go how we want, we can turn to Him with assurance that He will act on our behalf, according to His purposes. It means that we have, or have access to, the wisdom we need to handle the situation we find ourselves in. It means that God will walk with us through the bad times and the good. It’s God’s love and righteousness that get us through the hard times. It’s what He has taught us that helps us make good decisions and teach our children and grandchildren to make good decisions, even when those decisions are hard. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more