Today's Scripture Reading (May 6, 2020): Ezekiel 11
Recently, a meme went through
Facebook that declared that Facebook had banned the Lord's Prayer on its social
media site. The meme then directed people to post the Lord's prayer on their Facebook
pages, proving that Christians are not willing to give in to the whims of the social
media giant. Of course, the easiest way to place the Lord's Prayer on your Facebook
page was to share the meme. In reality, Facebook has never issued any such directive
but, as with so many other things that we are asked to share, our gullibility
made someone a lot of money. And, because we trusted, we became part of the
lie.
Ernest Hemmingway said that "The
best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
Unfortunately, it is also a very expensive way. If we decide to trust someone,
and then we find out that they are not trustworthy, the result is a costly bill
that we are going to have to pay. When we post other people's lies on social
media, people learn that we cannot be trusted. I just shared what I saw is not
an adequate defense. We became the untrustworthy avenue for the lies to travel
down. (You know all those, I am so ugly that no one will share my picture
memes? Every single one of them represents a lie that someone is trying to lure
you into so that they can make money. The best thing to do is to follow the
drug use rule; just say no!) One of the only questions that really matters in
life is, "Can I trust you?"
Trust is not about perfect
performance or not making mistakes. We all make mistakes. We all have made
decisions that afterward we wish we could take back. The central element of trust
is that the person has the aim to make the best decision possible in the middle
of a specific set of circumstances. I can trust you if I know that you want the
best for me. If you don't, then I need to guard my every response so that my
actions benefit me and those who have placed their trust in me
It is an argument that surfaces in
every political campaign. In the last provincial (state) election cycle, it was
trust that divided my vote. The reality was that the political party I agreed
with the most in principle, I felt had violated my ability to trust with their
actions. The candidate that I trusted the most came from a party that I thought
had wrong policies, especially when it came to economics. The result was a tug of
war inside of me. Eventually, I threw my full support behind the politician
that had earned my trust, even though I felt that his party was headed in the
wrong direction. Was it the right decision? I don't know. But at the time it
was the only one that I felt I could make.
God points out to Ezekiel a group
of men standing at the gates of the Temple, and standing among them were two of
the leaders of the city. And the message that God gives to Ezekiel is one based
on trust. God tells Ezekiel that these men are giving wicked advice to the
people of the city, and they definitely can't be trusted. We don't know what
the advice might have been, but it seems likely that they were taking a message
to the people that argued that God would never let Jerusalem fall. And God
needed Ezekiel to bring the truth to anyone who would listen. This time the
city was in trouble. Jerusalem had not fallen in the past, but this time it
would fall. It was a trustworthy message delivered by someone that the people
could trust, because he was in contact with his God.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 12
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