Skip to main content

Lord?

             Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9)

 

            How fickle I am. I get sick, and my whole life narrows to my illness. I’ve written about this before, but I’m living it again. The Lord my God is God, well, yeah, of course…sure… but I’m sick. “Please excuse me from doing Your will, Lord, because I’m sick. When I’m better, You can resume Your rightful place as Lord, but right now, I want to crawl into bed. And it doesn’t matter that my symptoms today aren’t as bad as yesterday…” How little it takes for something else to become a lord.

            The point is not that God is a taskmaster, and I’m falling short. This illness is something He’s allowed in my life, and I suspect His greatest desire in it is for me to trust Him within it. That means it’s OK if I spend time in bed instead of doin the things I think I should be doing, but it’s not OK if this bug so consumes my thoughts that there is no room for God in them. But isn’t that how we are. Viruses and other things so consume our ready energy and attention that what’s important falls by the wayside unless it is something that gets in our face, like kids needing dinner. Even as we drag ourselves through the basics and essentials, our heart isn’t in it. We may want to care, or have faith, or be loyal, but when it feels as if you spent the previous day bench pressing 300 lbs and leg pressing three times that… how’s a woman supposed to get past that?

            Yes, God forgives, but if we allow a virus lordship in our lives, how are we to prevent bigger things from doing the same? We may benefit from the bigger thing being less intimate, but it’s also bigger.

            I’m not sure that what you do when you’re sick needs to change all that much. It may be completely within God’s will that you rest all day. But here’s the challenge based on this passage. What happens if you spend at least part of the time you’re flat on your back saying, “The Lord my God is God, and the virus is not. The Lord my God is God, and the virus is not”? Or, what if you pray for other people or for God to reveal Himself as a faithful God – and a loving God? If you can manage 30 seconds of denying the virus lordship, you’ve won that 30 seconds. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
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