Life Matters, June 30, 2021
Our present administration seems confused into thinking that "might makes right." God is not confused and is still patiently trying, without force, to show us what we'll all see without questioning on the day of judgment, that Right makes Might.
In the meantime, it looks like a long four years, with recovery from those four years looking even longer. I've been around long enough to know that “this too shall pass," but also that regaining ground is more labor-intensive than losing it. Will President Joe still be around to see and experience what is looking more and more like the calamities of his tenure? Possibly not, for time is no respecter of persons. As the poet says:
When as a child I crawled, time crept,
As I learned to play and work, time walked,
When I became a teen, time ran,
As older still I grew, time flew,
When a senior I became, time slipped away,
Soon as time goes on, time gone,
Then when all is said and done, Jesus Lives!
And Jesus, we are informed by the word of God, is made unto us "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. That, according as it is written, he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.” (I Cor. 1:30 & 31) And as we glory in the Lord rather than glory in ourselves, we can be concerned about being fair to others without insisting upon fairness for ourselves.
We live in a world where a lot happens that is unfair. To have a joy-filled life is to keep our ultimate focus upon Jesus Christ and to be recipients of the other-worldly courage that He gives. To focus upon ourselves being treated fairly by others seems to increase misery in direct proportion to the volume of our insistence. Much like the seeking of pleasure outside the will of God in which the more we seek after pleasure outside of His will, the more elusive pleasure becomes.
God has given boundaries to the pleasure that He gives and within those boundaries we experience a taste, however small, of the pleasures forevermore that God has prepared for those who love Him. Outside of those boundaries we slowly but surely become desensitized to those pleasures we seek after so diligently, and eventually desperately. The end result is not unlike the alcoholic going through life in a drunken stupor, desensitized to all that formerly gave him pleasure. The "proof is in the pudding,” that this desperate seeking for pleasure by the rejection of restraints eventually leads to anarchy, the rejection of any and all restraints.
Lasting satisfaction is only found in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God has boundaries around the pleasures He has, in His wisdom, deemed lawful for us. Boundaries that keep us sensitive to the healthy pleasures that He allows. Doing what is right is the best, the most joyful, the most satisfying way to live. We need only look to the Christian martyrs of yesteryear for evidence of that. The testimony of their words and their lives were such that their persecutors, who thought they had power, were helplessly frustrated at the futility of their tortures, threatenings and even killings to take captive the free minds of these mighty warriors for Christ. Mighty because right makes might. With the present administration, the possibility of persecution, maybe through cancellation or some such means, seems in my mind, to loom on the horizon. In the meantime, as Peter Marshall put it, "May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but the opportunity to do what is right." Right makes Might. Life Matters!