Life Matters - October 23, 2024
‘’Love people from your heart, not from your mood and needs.’’ – unknown. From the Amish people of Nickel Mines Pennsylvania forgiving the killer of their children and reaching out to his family, to the outpouring of practical love for people in hurricane ravaged areas of southeastern America, to the many incidents large and small, in the example spectrum of caring people, we have many practical examples of what it is like when love has shoes on, (Silvia Tarniceriu) when love is active. (Is it ever not?) From the able-bodied volunteers to the disable-bodied prayer warriors and all in between, it is only normal for love to be involved, contributing to the health and well-being of God’s kingdom while we are here on this chaotic globe. It is only normal, that is, for those who love life. And God’s people have all reason to love Life. To have Life, (that is, from above) is to Love and to Love is to have Life. That thought permeates the teachings of Jesus Christ. It permeates the commandments of God.
Why, then, does God allow the trials that He allows? Would we not make everything nice and lovely for our children, whom we love, if we had the power that God has? Why does God allow adversity? Does He not love us?
I like how one Jason Daughdrill put it; ‘’In the process of giving your kids (children) what you never had, don’t forget to develop what you did have. Grit. Tenacity. Work ethic. Drive. Initiative. Gratitude. These are values needed to be healthy and whole adults. Some things are developed through adversity.’’
Methinks that is how God looks at it. In the process of making everything nice and lovely for our children they may very well follow human nature and become soft, spoiled, full-grown ‘’entitled’’ brats ‘’steamrolled’’ by the first major adverse event ‘’coming down the pike’’ of their event-filled adult lives. Not that we have to create adverse events for them. Adversity will come their way, even as it has for all since the world began. We do well if we teach and train them to right and good responses when faced with adverse events.
Affluence merely moves the battle lines to somewhere else. Job discovered that when his wealth gained him a place above the daily grinding concern of making ends meet. The effect his wealth had on his children raised a new concern, moving him to sacrifice a burnt offering to God for each one, as they feasted, in case they sinned. His concern had just cause as his material gains made their lives one of leisure. And when they were all together in one place at a feasting party, a great wind arose, collapsing the house, killing all but one man who lived to tell the story. Yes, adversity will come. It is only a matter of time. The last enemy, death, (1 Corinthians 15:26) overtook all of Job’s children at once. One adverse event killed them all, seven sons and three daughters, besides servants. Hopefully they died with God’s accepting forgiveness in their hearts, minds, and on their lips.
I expect when Job and his wife grieved over the deaths of their children, they hoped with the hoping love of parents, that their sons and daughters were all right with God when they died, the hope and trust of which helps to ease the excruciating pain of loss.
Loss. As excruciating as it is, or can be, it is part of life in this temporary realm of time. For those who go from this temporal realm to the realm of eternity unprepared the loss defies description, except to say that it means eternity without God. An eternity without God means eternity without forgiveness, eternity without caring people wanting to help, eternity without any good, eternity without love. Eternity without God, then, must be excruciating beyond words. A place of evil, uncaring, unforgiving hatred.
A place that we (as in, western culture) seem to have set aside a misnomered day for. Costumes are made, worn, after imaginations of the devil, ghosts, goblins, ghouls, witches, and horrible masks depicting the grotesque contortions of the damned, or in some cases, sensual costumes that lead to more and greater separation from God. The day is misnomered as halloween, which is a short form of hallowed evening. Costumes may range from the evil to benign, but a celebration of what is hallowed, or holy, it is not. A celebration of death, maybe, but not of life.
We may reason that fall is a time of death, plants die, leaves fall, grass goes dormant, so when we celebrate harvest we may also include death, as it is a necessary part of harvest. Reasoning thus would practically ignore the continuum of life in a bountiful harvest. Each kernel of grain, each kernel of corn, (as created) has life in it. Heritage kernels are used for seed the following year. Life-giving seeds are harvested every fall to carry that life over into the ground at spring planting, where the seed dies but the life in it sends its roots down for moisture and nutrients while sending a new plant upward to benefit from the sun rays and the pollination of bees. For the purpose of producing more life. More life-sustaining food and seeds for another bountiful harvest. A continuum allegory of Life eternal.
I love how God says in Deuteronomy 30:19; ‘’…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life…’’ That includes October 31st. Let us choose, and celebrate, Life.
Life Matters!