May 28, 2014
Called Out
My grandkids, ages eight and
ten, think it is great sport to poke one another in order to get a rise out of
each other. Recently Lydia stood behind
David in the rocking chair and gave it a nudge. When he ask her to quit she
did, but less than a minute elapsed and she did it again. David protested and
Lydia said, “What? What’d I do? I didn’t do anything!” I watched the whole drama
unfold and I couldn’t believe it when Lydia, without batting an eye, feigned innocence.
She was a little shocked when I called her out, not for agitating her brother,
but for claiming innocence. This same scenario is played out every day in the
lives of believers and we too seem surprised when the Spirit calls us out for
making excuses rather than taking responsibility.
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Gail;
-----God pronounces that He is going to completely wipe everything from the face of the earth. Man, animals, birds, and fish alike will He sweep away, as Zephaniah tells us. God told something similar to Noah. And He did it. But He did not tell Noah He would never do it again. He assured Noah He would never flood the earth again. He would burn it. Peter frames this in a snapshot of all the elements melting away. Jesus revealed to John the destruction and annihilation that sweeps over everything after the kingdom of the earth becomes the kingdom of the Lord. Everything in the seas die; all water is turned to blood; and the earth quakes till man’s cities are leveled and God’s city splits into three parts. Creepy, this God must be!
-----Perfection is an interesting ponder. Constrain it and you will think you can have it. For example, one steel ball bearing is perfectly like those on either side of it if measurement is constrained to what the eye can behold. But put the three under an electron microscope and perfection will flee. In fact, perfection is destroyed by constraint in as much as existence itself is the relationship that everything has with everything else. To constrain something in order to claim its perfection breaches that relationship of existence, which breach is also an imperfection.
-----Lucifer’s breach was a crisis to God’s perfection. In that both existed was the threat the error could imperfect righteousness. Righteousness isn’t a word I like, only because of how it is misperceived. Otherwise, I love it! Going to church and dropping our goody-two-shoes mite into the offering plate and partaking of communion and singing a few songs and shaking a few hands all the while pasting a waxy smile across our faces is being righteous if we are also willing to drop an extra coin to the missionary for whose work we feigned great excitement during his boring presentation. Doing religious things isn’t righteousness. Righteousness is everything being right, done right, staying right, and effecting everything else in all the right ways. From every last, tiniest, quantum unit to every one of them everywhere there is a where, together all being thusly right is the perfection of God’s existence. Lucifer’s gaff marred perfection itself.
-----We chose to partake in Lucifer’s blemish. And every time we so much as cut a corner by failing to analyze our next move from the very last of it’s most minute details to the import of their overall effect, we choose again to partake in it. If that does not enough show how inescapable from sin we are, then also ponder the fact that even the slightest thought or emotion is also a move. We ruin God’s perfection.
-----That’s what I John 1:9 is about. On our side of the relationship is the confession that we are wrong and He is right. On His side is the mystery of His wisdom revealed through the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places: grace. By it we who are wrong are made right in His righteousness because we choose to desire what is right only, and because He gained the right to make us that way by His doing right, right up to and through the cross. So we rejoice at the horror of everything of this current earth being wiped away. For that is the removal of imperfection. In our unwillingness to feign innocence we avoid this brooming by confessing our sins for Him to wash away instead. We then remain perfected in relation to Him. Not too creepy!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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