Today's Scripture Reading (July 31, 2020): Isaiah 48
A story is told
about an old-fashioned church testimony service in which one of the parishioners
rose to tell his story of a changed life in Christ. "I was sinking deep in
sin, stuck in the miry clay of selfishness. The Devil was getting the better of
me as my life just got worse, but when I turned seven, I asked Jesus to come
into my life, and the last year has been the best that I have ever lived."
The reality of the testimony service is that children listen well to us and
mimic the things that we say. But the humor of the situation is that, as an
adult, it is hard to imagine just how deep into the miry clay of sin a
seven-year-old child could get.
But the voice
of a child also points us to a reality that we sometimes miss. Yes, sin is sin,
and all sin carries us farther away from God, but what is different in all of
us is that sin forms habits, which creates momentum toward more sin. My habits
and yours are not the same. And the habits of an adult who decided as a seven-year-old
child to turn to Christ make life far more manageable than one who built up
forty years of experience and habits before making that decision. The longer we
put off getting our lives right, the more patterns we build-up that makes it
harder to accomplish that feat. Sin is sin, but our habits complicate our efforts
to live better.
And sometimes,
the only solution is to tear down what went before totally. This is the message
that Isaiah has for the exiles. Isaiah tells them that all that had happened to
them had to happen. God was refining them. But the refining process, which is
sometimes likened to that of refining silver and gold, really isn't. God is not
passing us through a literal fire. And the process for purifying silver is a neutral
one. It is just part of the procedure. But with us, we have ownership over all
of the impurities that have built up in our lives. It was our actions or
inactions that caused the habits which drove us toward sin in the first place.
And it is up to
us to take the action needed amid the purification. Israel had a choice. They
had been uprooted from everything that they knew in their lives and placed in
Babylon. But the refining process depended on what the exiles did next. They could
take the opportunity of that had been presented to them by the exile and get
things right, or they could simply rebuild what they had built before their
expulsion out of Judah. And that choice had to be made by the people. Silver does
not have a will. It would be purified whether it wanted to be cleaned or not.
But the refugees in Babylon were not silver. They had a choice about whether
the process would work or not. They could give in to the will of God or continue
to rebel against it. And the decision was theirs.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah
49
No comments:
Post a Comment