Timelytidbits’s Weblog

After reading my last blog about God’s will you could get the impression that there is no commitment in God’s Will.  I would like to take a couple of blogs to discuss that because nothing could be further from the truth.

Our world is a world that feeds on running away from commitment or obsesses in being committed to the wrong thing (the operative word here is “thing”).  This is not just this generation but every generation.  We worry more about gaining power, greed, success, sex, and a thousand excesses than we do about the people around us.  As a matter of fact the people around us are simply means to getting the list I just mentioned.  We as humanity are users, always have been.  And there in lies the problem.  Not a very positive view is it?  Is there good in the world?  Absolutely.  Is there good in each of us?  Undeniably.  But in case you are wondering I am not one of those people who ascribes to the idea that everyone is basically good.   Let me explain and to do that we must go back to the very beginning.

God created us to be good and holy.  We are made in His image and likeness, after all.  Read the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible

       So God created man in his own image,
       in the image of God he created him;
       male and female he created them.   Genesis 1:27

We were made for God by God.  How many songs can we name at Church that have the phrase “God is Love”?  That is His essential nature — love, unselfish, giving, COMMITTED Love.  Don’t believe me?  Read the Bible.  It is, from beginning to end, a love story; a profession of God’s love for YOU and me.  God made the world.  God made us.  Problem was God made us with free will and with that will we turned our backs on God.  Why?  Power, greed, success… (See list above)

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.   Genesis 3:6

The question we need to ask ourselves, not only in this story but in our life, what did God do when Adam & Eve turned their back on God?  Yes, God got angry.  Just as a loving parent does when they find their children have consumed poison.  “What did you do?” most would scream.  But God never turned His back on Adam & Eve and doesn’t to you and me. 

Lets fast forward a few thousand years to a guy by the name of Abraham and his wife Sarah.  God was with humanity throughout all this time (Noah…) but it wasn’t until Abraham that God revealed Himself and invited humanity back into a personal relationship.  Even though Abraham and Sara were old, beyond the age of having children, God promised them descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and sands on the beach.  All they had to do was follow him.  What happens next (for the next several thousand years) is a series of the people of God saying they will follow God and they do but then they don’t… they get tempted and fall away.  God sends a teacher, leader, judge, king or prophet to bring the people back.  They repent, turn back to God and all is well till the next time.

Fast forward again.  God shows His love for us by sending us the ultimate teacher, leader, judge, king and prophet — His Son, Jesus Christ.   Jesus not only teaches, leads, helps us to understand right from wrong, tells us what is going to happen if we continue to live in sin, but, he offers the ultimate sacrifice to show God’s commitment to us.  He takes our punishment by suffering and dieing on the cross.  Remember back to the beginning of this (now lengthy) blog — Adam & Eve eating the apple?  Our sin not God’s.  It should be each one of us who hangs on that cross not God.  God stuck with us for thousands of years through all sorts of rejection and denial.  God sticks with us today and there is nothing we can do to destroy that commitment to us.  STOP!  Hear what I just said:  There is NOTHING YOU or I can do to make God stop loving us.  NOTHING.  He doesn’t like the sin but he adores, loves and is deeply committed to the sinner.  Tune in for the “rest of the story”  I remain, your servant in Christ,

Theresa