Today’s Scripture
Reading (October 16, 2013): 2 Chronicles 16
Someone once
wrote - Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions,
then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart. The core of the
message is that it is okay to follow our dreams, but sometimes following our
heart really means acting on feelings alone without really considering the
direction that our feelings are likely to carry us in. Sometimes our heart is
simply comfortable with the “status quo.” In my dealings with people I
regularly recognize that change is hard, and our heart seldom leads the charge
toward change even when change is what is necessary for our health. So the
advice of the unknown author is that there just might be two levels of the
heart. The first level is that of our impulses. It is the direction of the
heart that we often recognize in the spur of the moment. But somewhere deeper
down, our heart knows the direction of need. Following that level of the heart
is sometimes hard, but we will be better off if we wait for the deeper areas of
our heart to guide us. If we wait and ask questions, rather than just move at
the first impulse of our heart we will find the true desire hidden somewhere
underneath.
Personally,
I am convinced that most Christians move on a very superficial level of the
heart. We seldom seem to take the time to really examine our actions and
desires, we rarely ask the questions that we need to ask, or wait for the
deeper areas of our heart to answer. Instead, we allow our hearts to be guided
by rules and regulations because in a very real way our hearts are comfortable
there. But comfortable is seldom a good thing.
There is
absolutely no question that Asa has led a good life. For most of his life he
has been the man of peace that his heart desired, and even in these later years
as war has been brought to his doorstep he has reacted well for the most part –
but there have been some dents in his armor revealed by the war. His heart has
tended to lead him into what is pragmatic rather than into the path that his
heart really believed was true. And one of these instances is in the sickness
of his legs.
Scholars
believe that the sickness of his legs was gout. And the comment that the
sickness was severe really means that the sickness was going up through the
body, and we know that when that happens with gout, death is likely to follow.
But the author of Chronicles mentions that Asa did not go to God for
deliverance from the sickness, but rather he just went to the medical doctors
of his day. And in this comment part of what is revealed is the Jewish mistrust
of physicians. But for Asa, who was a man of the world and had seen so many
things, this was just his immediate reaction of the surface of his heart to the
sickness. Of course he had gone to God when his enemies had attacked the nation,
but when he got sick, well, did not God give the doctors to him in the first
place.
I actually
understand Asa’s reaction because, if I am honest, it is often mine. I get sick
and surface of my heart leads me to doctors without a thought to God, but if I
had paused and questioned my heart, I would be led to the reality that deep
down I really do believe that God is the author of all healing – even if it is
a doctor that treats me. And when I wait and realize that, it will be to God
that I will go first.
Asa believed
in God, his life was a testament to that belief. But the surface of his heart
still had the potential to lead him into error. What Asa needed more than
anything else was for someone to remind him to pause and ask questions so that
he could get at the depths of the belief of his heart.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2
Chronicles 17
No comments:
Post a Comment