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Pure?

             to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd. (II Samuel 22:27) 

Shrewd: Having or showing sharp powers of judgment; astute. (Archaic, of weather) Piercingly cold.

God has the right to respond to people in different manners. Sometimes, as with Peter (most notably) and the other disciples, He could be loving and kind one moment and rebuke them in the next. But another possibility suggests itself. Suppose two people stood side-by-side and somehow even blinked at the same time, meaning that they both saw the same thing at the same time from the same physical perspective. It’s likely that in telling what happened, they would describe it differently.

Is that at least what David was celebrating? The song from which this passage was taken was sung because God had protected David from Saul. Chances are good that “the pure” to whom David refers includes himself. The devious undoubtedly includes Saul. And Saul would have declared himself to be pure most of the time but proclaimed God to have been at least shrewd and possibly even unjust. One little mistake! OK, maybe two…

This means that our view of God may tell us more about ourselves than it does about God. There’s also the fact that how we see God may have nothing to do with what we know to be true of Him. We may know He is pure, loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and possessing self-control. But that may not be what we see unless we are very careful. So, for your own meditation… How do you see God? How does it line up with what Scripture says?

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