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In The Way...

             This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. (Isaiah 48:17)

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

 

I wish this verse had been the verse of the day yesterday, immediately following my discussion of Proverbs 22:6. So often, people (including Christians) seem to think that God has a “one-size-fits-all” mentality. Those who follow Him become zombies that walk alike, talk alike, and think the exact same things. No variation allowed. Now, there are variations that God does declare to be evil, but being told that these ten things are bad, but those 63,957,612[1] things are permitted is not reducing us all to mindless puppets. Like Adam and Eve, if even one thing is outlawed, we are tempted to rebel, but it’s a fool’s rebellion.

God told Isaiah (and us) to tell the people that God teaches what is best for us, and directs them (and us) in the way they (we) should go. Just as yesterday’s verse discussed God in the role of ’Ēzer, today’s verse discusses God in the role of parent, teaching His children in the way they should go. This is another role that we tend to scorn and dismiss as having no value. God says it’s a role with which we may associate Him. It’s a role for which we could not possibly pay the humans who undertake it because there’s not enough money in the world- just as we cannot possibly repay or earn what God gives us and for the same reason.

Today’s verse speaks to where I am. I know He is going to guide me and provide for me as a good Father, but I’m impatient to see where that takes me. In the long run, it will build me into the sort of person who does what He has taught me to do, but the question of how He’ll do that has yet to be learned.


[1] This is an arbitrary number meant to express the vast difference between what we’re commanded to do or not do and our freedom to do everything else.

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