Breakfast time
If you are like me, one who often finds truth complex and confusing, maybe the idea of finding a simple truth improving life taunts you, as it has me. Is something more than taunting possible? When is the last time you had some simple truth make a significant impact on your routine life?
If it has been awhile or if you don’t have an immediate answer, you might be interested how a simple truth has recently impacted my life.
My story really begins at night on a hillside near Pleiku, Vietnam in 1966. The heavens were cloudless and starry, undisturbed by the loud booms of howitzers in the distance. The majesty of the scene high above me demanded that I think about the Creator. So I did. The opening lines of Psalm 8, a psalm I had recently memorized, bridged the expanse between heaven and my feelings. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.” Yes sir, the size, power, and greatness of the One who put the heavens together were unmistakably obvious that night.
As I silently recited the remainder of the psalm, I heard an ancient Hebrew ask the same question I was asking. “What is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”
I grabbed hold of an important truth that night that I have never forgotten. For the rest of my life I have known how mighty God is and how puny I am. Neither side of that truth, God’s majesty nor my insignificance, has ever been an area of doubt for me.
But the years and logic that followed left me wondering; wondering if I could have a close relationship with God on the far side of a space-wide chasm. Could the creator of the universe, high in the heavens, touch me where I craved to be touched and love me as I wanted to be loved?
As the calendar pages kept flipping past, I worked hard to find convincing evidence that Almighty God chose to love little old me. In seminary, my mind was satisfied that God loved me. As a pastor of souls, I was bombarded with signs that God cared enough about others to use me to bring some hope and consolation to weary pilgrims. Surely God was displaying his confidence in me to give me such noble opportunities to serve.
By now, in the autumn of my life, I have compiled a rather long list of blessings in my account. A supportive wife who has loved me for more than 50 years, children who honor their parents, a faulty life expectancy table, money in the bank, a Buick in the garage, and a comfortable home where I sleep and eat in peace – all are blessings I recognize. I understand them as signs that God chose to love me, a guy who could mess up a two car funeral and who makes Murphy seem like an optimist.
Again and again, I have been persuaded by hard, unimpeachable evidence that a transcendant God chooses to love me. Well … almost persuaded. The mirror where I shave, however, has kept me from being absolutely persuaded. In that mirror, I see a man I often don’t like, the man living under that thin layer of opaque skin. How could a self-centered guy who doesn’t always love himself be loved by a personal God?
Then it happened! At the breakfast table a few days ago, my wife and I were discussing a short passage from the Bible. The Scripture boldly stated that God chose us even before he laid out the universe. God’s choosing of us turned into talk about the ways that God has blessed us. After listening to my wife’s litany of blessings, in the smooth words of a Reverend, I said, “Yes, God must really love us.”
Before I put the period on that sentence, God interrupted my thinking and added a different ending to my thought. “Yeah, but I didn’t have to.”
That thought, God “didn’t have to” wouldn’t go away. All day long and for several days afterwards, I kept hearing those words, “Yeah, but I didn’t have to.” Slowly at first, and then at a faster clip, I threw out the many lies I had accepted through several decades; lies that can be summed up this way. “God can’t help it that he loves me; that’s the kind of God he is.”
That God didn’t have to choose me, love me, or bless me added a refreshing perspective to what I already believed. And my life is different again. Different and better. Thank God!
In the same way, if God didn’t have to choose you, love you, or bless you, but did anyway, you have yet another reason to be glad – a gladness that soaks into your whole life.
John
If it has been awhile or if you don’t have an immediate answer, you might be interested how a simple truth has recently impacted my life.
My story really begins at night on a hillside near Pleiku, Vietnam in 1966. The heavens were cloudless and starry, undisturbed by the loud booms of howitzers in the distance. The majesty of the scene high above me demanded that I think about the Creator. So I did. The opening lines of Psalm 8, a psalm I had recently memorized, bridged the expanse between heaven and my feelings. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.” Yes sir, the size, power, and greatness of the One who put the heavens together were unmistakably obvious that night.
As I silently recited the remainder of the psalm, I heard an ancient Hebrew ask the same question I was asking. “What is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”
I grabbed hold of an important truth that night that I have never forgotten. For the rest of my life I have known how mighty God is and how puny I am. Neither side of that truth, God’s majesty nor my insignificance, has ever been an area of doubt for me.
But the years and logic that followed left me wondering; wondering if I could have a close relationship with God on the far side of a space-wide chasm. Could the creator of the universe, high in the heavens, touch me where I craved to be touched and love me as I wanted to be loved?
As the calendar pages kept flipping past, I worked hard to find convincing evidence that Almighty God chose to love little old me. In seminary, my mind was satisfied that God loved me. As a pastor of souls, I was bombarded with signs that God cared enough about others to use me to bring some hope and consolation to weary pilgrims. Surely God was displaying his confidence in me to give me such noble opportunities to serve.
By now, in the autumn of my life, I have compiled a rather long list of blessings in my account. A supportive wife who has loved me for more than 50 years, children who honor their parents, a faulty life expectancy table, money in the bank, a Buick in the garage, and a comfortable home where I sleep and eat in peace – all are blessings I recognize. I understand them as signs that God chose to love me, a guy who could mess up a two car funeral and who makes Murphy seem like an optimist.
Again and again, I have been persuaded by hard, unimpeachable evidence that a transcendant God chooses to love me. Well … almost persuaded. The mirror where I shave, however, has kept me from being absolutely persuaded. In that mirror, I see a man I often don’t like, the man living under that thin layer of opaque skin. How could a self-centered guy who doesn’t always love himself be loved by a personal God?
Then it happened! At the breakfast table a few days ago, my wife and I were discussing a short passage from the Bible. The Scripture boldly stated that God chose us even before he laid out the universe. God’s choosing of us turned into talk about the ways that God has blessed us. After listening to my wife’s litany of blessings, in the smooth words of a Reverend, I said, “Yes, God must really love us.”
Before I put the period on that sentence, God interrupted my thinking and added a different ending to my thought. “Yeah, but I didn’t have to.”
That thought, God “didn’t have to” wouldn’t go away. All day long and for several days afterwards, I kept hearing those words, “Yeah, but I didn’t have to.” Slowly at first, and then at a faster clip, I threw out the many lies I had accepted through several decades; lies that can be summed up this way. “God can’t help it that he loves me; that’s the kind of God he is.”
That God didn’t have to choose me, love me, or bless me added a refreshing perspective to what I already believed. And my life is different again. Different and better. Thank God!
In the same way, if God didn’t have to choose you, love you, or bless you, but did anyway, you have yet another reason to be glad – a gladness that soaks into your whole life.
John
posted by John | 9:36 AM
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