The Irony and My Tears
What is your hope? What is a reason to keep on trying? More often than not, watching the daily news numbs me to humanity’s violence and suffering. But recently, I made myself sit back and take a mental inventory of the wickedness in the world. Numbness is not a healthy state.
WHICH SIDE do we naturally fall on:
LOVE . . . HATE
HEAL . . . HURT
SAVE . . . KILL
GIVE . . . STEAL
BLESS . . . CURSE
I thought I knew my answer.
Bear with me . . .
THE THINGS I MAKE never talk back. Sometimes they stop working, but they never stick their tongue out and give me the “kiss off” signal. That’s because I don’t give my homemade things a soul, or a will to choose their path.
MY MAKER, on the other hand, did. And He grieved.
“I am sorry that I have made them (mankind)” Gen 6:6
How painful! He had made us for love and companionship. He made us “in Our image” to have dominion over this beautiful planet.
BUT THEN (v.5) . . .
“…Human evil was out of control. People thought evil,
imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night“
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Violent to the core. (Somehow Noah managed to hold to godly values, and I often contemplate how he knew what was wrong and right in the sight of a perfect God w/o a Bible to guide him.)
FAST FORWARD to Judas. With an intimate, brotherly kiss, he betrayed Jesus—a third of the “in Our image” group. His action led people to literally spit on God. To beat Him. They abused the very Man who came to save and reconcile us to God.
SPAT. BEAT. ABUSED.<><><><> BLIND RAGE.
How far do I go when we don’t get my own way? Denial to the point of blindness?
So in my recent mental inventory of humanity’s evil–and attempting not to grow numb–I came to this conclusion:
God has every right and reason to wipe us out as He did back in the time of Noah. Instead, He wiped out and forsook His own blood, the only righteous and perfect Man to ever live.
The dichotomy of this reality kills me. In a good way, it makes me more aware of how undeserving I am.
You love . . . we hate
You heal . . . we hurt
You save . . . we kill
You give . . . we steal
You bless . . . we curse
You are peace . . . we are unrest
You are kind . . . we are cruel
You forgave . . .we judge
You died . . . we live
We live?
I LIVE!!
What else can I do
But fall on my face
And praise Your holy name
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Staying in tune with humanity’s volatile condition makes the choice to praise easier, even necessary for sanity’s sake. What’s your choice?
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(btw- thanks, Noah, for being an illustration of hope amid evil times)
The Way of the Embattled Spirit
