Right away in the first chapter of today's reading I was struck by verse 10: "The length of our days is seventy years -- or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away." (emphasis mine) In my Bible study group last week, we were talking about how we are protected by angels, as it says in the Bible, and yet bad things (trouble and sorrow) still happen to us. One of the ladies in the group asked a question that really resonated with me. She said "Do we put too much emphasis on this life?" Not in terms of how we live, because how we live our lives on this earth is important, but in terms of protecting ourselves -- avoiding and being so fearful of anything that may cause pain, sorrow or death. Those things are part of our existence here, and it is human nature to try to avoid or prevent pain, but do we put too much emphasis on protecting our earthly life and not enough on our spiritual or eternal life? Is that why we have such trouble reconciling a God who loves us, forgives us, and protects us with a God who didn't prevent things, or allows things, or even causes things (and I don't think we can always know which of those three it is, until we get to heaven) like the Holocaust, or the tragedies in Haiti, or the murder of Candace Derksen, for example?
How we live our lives here on Earth is important. Caring for our physical being as the temple of God is also important. But if worry and fear for our earthly life and physical being undermines our care for our eternal being or spiritual life, that is a problem. (Easy for me to say, as I don't live in a country where Christians are persecuted, but I still believe this to be true.)
If we accept that angels protect us from harm, as it says in Psalm 91:11: "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;" - then we must also accept that in the instances when something like an accident or an illness is not prevented, it was purposeful. There are simply no two ways about it. I know this is not a popular opinion, but it is what I have come to believe.
The following is from the book Come Thirsty by Max Lucado. In a chapter entitled In God We (Nearly) Trust, he says:
We live beneath the protective palm of a sovereign King who superintends every circumstance of our lives and delights in doing us good.
Nothing comes your way that has not first pass through the filter of his love. Margaret Clarkson, in her wonderfully titled book Grace Grows Best in Winter, wrote:
The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. . . . All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and the personal history of every member of his redeemed family.
Psalm 90:14-15 says "Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble." (emphasis mine) To me, this says that we are to take our joy from God, from his unfailing love, from faith in his promises, and be thankful for the years we have on this earth, even in trouble and sorrow, as that's part of life here. For the Lord says "He will call upon me, and I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him." (Psalm 91:15, emphasis mine) God goes through our trouble, our pain and our sorrows with us. He is always with us. He's not somewhere in the blue yonder looking down at us with detachment and experimenting to see how we'll handle the situations in which we find ourselves. He is right there with us, waiting to carry us like it says in the Footprints poem, if we'll only trust him and ask.
This post is already getting long, so I won't dwell on the further reading, except to say that in Mark 5 we read about the legion of demons begging Jesus to allow them to go into the pigs and in verse 13 it says "He gave them permission". He gave them permission! If that doesn't prove what Margaret Clarkson was saying above, I don't know what does. "All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it."
For more information on the sacrifices and their meanings that we read about in Leviticus today, see the February 16th post from last year. There is a summary on when the different sacrifices were to be used and for what purposes.
Tomorrow's passage: Leviticus 3-5; Mark 5:21-43.
7 comments:
Great post Miriam! I love reading Psalms. It is a good reminder - always - that everything passes through the filter of God's love first. I like that.
Very good post. I like your line "He's not somewhere in the blue yonder looking down at us with detachment and experimenting to see how we'll handle the situations in which we find ourselves." Sometimes it feels like this, though. "Hmm, lets see how they handle this..." I know that's not true. Your other line "...we must accept that in the instances when something is not prevented, it was purposeful." We must believe! How true. I must remember that in those situations. Thank you.
Great post Miriam. I also liked the same lines Kathryn quoted. :)
I totally agree! We seem to feel that we have a right to health, happiness, etc., and when things go wrong or we're hurt (emotionally or physically) or something bad happens, that our life isn't the way it SHOULD be. And yet, this is just how life IS!
I've always sort of wondered about some of the psalmists and prophets who said things like angels will guard us or not a hair of our head will be harmed.... obviously, that can't be a literal physical form of protection they're talking about. But I think that's all the more reason to place more weight and importance on life in eternity rather than life here on earth.
Great post!
Thank you for your comments, ladies! I was a little worried about how this post would be received, as a couple of the ladies in my Bible study group have a very difficult time with this subject.
Tammi, I think at times they are talking about a literal physical form of protection. Obviously that is not always, or even usually, the case, but there are books written by reputable people that document cases where something or someone was protected in a supernatural way. I haven't read any, although there is one by Billy Graham in our church library that I would like to read.
Oh yes, I know of incredible stories too, where it has been literal, physical protection, but those do sort of seem to be the exceptions ~ at least for how it appears to human eyes. There's no telling how many accidents and mishaps would have been much worse WITHOUT their involvement!
I fully believe angels step in in a very tangeible way from time to time, but their primary protection does seem to be of a more spiritual nature.
I agree with you too Miriam. I think that if we believe that God will command angels to protect us, He can also allow unfortunate things to happen according to His plan.
The discussion on angels made me think of an OLD favourite song of mine by Amy Grant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUKcUxnvHEw
(just ignore the lack of correct spelling and refusal to use capital letters *shudder*)
I remember taking to heart the lyrics of the second verse and thinking that it was impossible to know what terrible things I was protected from without knowing it. Of course it is easier to think of what I could be experiencing than to to think of it the other way-what is God allowing to happen to me.
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