Why do people who would never think about playing the lottery start thinking about it when the winnings start getting really really high? Maybe it is because the cost to investment ratio becomes more and more disproportionate. Suddenly it seems worth it.
"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. ... I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them." Deuteronomy 30:15, 19-20 ESV
Life is the greatest possible return and death is the greatest loss or risk.
I sat with a man recently who is angry about the slaughter of millions of people over the centuries... It is a contradiction that he can not reconcile against the existence of a good caring God. There either can't be a God at all or if He has the control He claims He must be immoral.
Knowing the capacity of the mind to suppress things it can't reconcile I can understand how negating God's existence on a conscious or subconscious level would be the easier choice. The thought that God is immoral or evil would produce a fear I wouldn't want to live in.
Back to choices. What if all my choices are life or death ones? What if time is short and each moment is more costly than any lottery prize could ever hope to be.
Mankind has suffered like they have because of choices. God is not immoral... he is respectful. Yes, He has set the stakes very high because He wants each of us to get great returns on each investment of faith.
Without Jesus we could not find the right choice. It was death, death and more death. We were condemned already.
"I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus" 1 Corinthians 1:4 ESV
Grace was given in Christ so that we could say, "Yes and Amen'. Every time we do we win and live in the victory that is already ours.
Apart from seeing history through the eyes of grace we can not reconcile all the hardship and disaster. We can through grace.
ReplyDeleteI look at the history of Israel and all that befell her people through the centuries and it brings me back to the long list starting in Deuteronomy 28 verse 15. It is so much longer than the list of blessings that comes before. It seems that blessings are simple things but curses are complicated... decisions compound decisions.
It is with such a mixture of sadness, yearning and gratefulness I face this reality head on. Like The Apostle Paul I want Israel to be saved. I want every person to be saved.
Only an illumination of grace does that... a glimpse of Jesus as He really is and a recognition of what He has done has that power. There are no back doors... Jesus Himself is the only way out of pain and into eternal life.