This creation that we are so crazy about has a limit. It does not satisfy our deepest longings. Regardless of the amount of awe stirred in you by creation, it will one day disappear. It will betray each one of us, leaving us wanting something new or wanting something more. No matter how great of a family, husband or wife, friends, or parents you have, they will some day die. No life ever lasts, something new is always needed and nothing created ever satisfies...
We are blind according to (2 Corinthians 4:4). We cannot see the glory, or, in other words, the significance that God can have in our lives, that our very purpose is to be satisfied only in Him.
We walk in darkness and are dead because of our inability to see this.
(John 15:5)In saying we can do "NOTHING" Jesus is not saying we cannot do ANYTHING, because we of course can. I can get married, move to a different city every 6 months (j/k), go on a bike ride, give money to the poor, live an altruistic lifestyle if I wanted...
But nothing that is going to survive will be accomplished by myself. The only things that will live on after me are those things that are rooted in Jesus, our God who saves. No good or right act lives on into eternity apart from Jesus. Apart from him I can do nothing. Outside of Jesus, we are blind slaves, under a death sentence, that cannot do anything about it.
That is bleak.
Luke 18:15-17 with emphasis on 17.
Babies are born helpless, blind, powerless, in need of saving, in need of an identity, in need of protecting... they are in complete and desperate need of salvation or else they get death. If someone does not intervene and provide the baby will die! I think the helpless nature of small children is more of what we should be thinking about when we read these verses in Luke. We are not asked to be ignorant or naive in our faith. Is mindless faith honoring to the Creator who gave us our very minds (which are capable of so much)? Is God unable to handle the weight of our questions? I am afraid that we are too fixed upon a child's innocence rather then their helplessness when we read these verses in Luke.
The reality of life is that we are as helpless as little children. We need to accept this if we are going to find a way out of life's dark realities.
We need to receive the Kingdom of God like a child... But how? By feeling the weight of our desperation, just like a child - we need to be saved, to be forgiven, to be healed, to be provided for, to be cared for, to be protected, to be given an identity...
We must come to God like a child comes to a parent - open-handed, filled with hope, trusting that the God of the Universe will do the things that will sustain us.
He has to save us or we are done for, because we cannot save ourselves. We are completely dependent on Him. We often see faith in adult-like complexity. 'You are too slow God in this so I am going to handle it!' And because of this we do not submit and cry out to God, 'I will trust you! I will obey because I know that you know what is best for me. I am finding what I need in you... you define me.'
Our hope, faith, and trust must be in Him.
How do we get there? Like a child.
There is a lot of crying in the first few years of any life. If the bottle is not gotten there quick enough, if they sit in a dirty diaper for too long, if they get hurt there will be crying. There was a lot of crying at my old job as a Preschool teacher and still some as I meet children in Oakland schools (some are young, others are older, but I still see crying in them all when their most basic needs are not met).
These screams are primal example of how we have to come to the Kingdom of God.
I am hungry, help me!
I hurt, help me!
I am dirty, help me!
I don't know where to go, help me!
I don't know how to fix this, help me!
I am scared, help me!
This is not working, help me!
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2 comments:
thank you, thank you, thank God, you posted this. writing a paper on the integration of biblical truth and group therapy. i have been struggling with some of the "crying" that has been going on in practicing group therapy, and a wee bit nervous as to the enormity of crying-like experiences of pain i have chosen to sit with in the counseling profession.
YET...because of your posting I hear God saying, but Monica...this is how you must come to me. How prideful I must be to think I don't need to cry out for him, and exactly who these children are that need help....all of us, including me.
So, for my first step in crying, i say help me God! please help me mend the wounds and dry the tears of these i am called to help. let me see my own need for you in every one of my patients. let me not ever offer anything in my own strength!
I enjoyed this post. IN fact, if you don't mind, I'd like to use some of your points for my sermon on Sunday! Keep at it bro!
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