Monday, June 6, 2022
There is No Tape Measure
for the Truly Marvellous Things in Life.
(or the least marvellous.)
1 Chronicles 28:9
My son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.
1 John 4:13
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
Were we to measure our lives by any means dependent upon our own abilities, actions, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, or anything that is of us, we would come up with a fools result.
It’s like using a tape measure to figure out how much sewer the whole city of 2 million produces in a day. The tool is not up to the task of the things measured.
One thing we know is our own records are not far off from the sewer contents when it comes to being something we can boast of before God.
To measure our ‘success’ in life (as God might measure us) we simply need to admit we cannot. The only things we know about God and God’s measure of us is what the Holy Spirit gives us as gift. We cannot measure those gifts either. So we come up empty handed trying to measure our success before God.
We can only trust God (trust made possible by the gift given to us by the Spirit) that God does not forsake us, abandon us, or leave us to stand on our own, now in this life, or ever in eternity. God stands by us, walks with us, suffers with us, and does everything to convince us that all is well, all is well, and all manner of things are well, because (and only because) God is gracious with us.
Of course we would prefer to know that we can serve God with a single mind and a willing heart, and that we can seek and find God. That way we are in control of what happens to us and to the world around us. But that’s not how God created us to live. God designed us to live guided by love, grace, faith and hope; and none of that gives us the ability to judge our own ‘success’ in serving God with a single mind and a single heart. It certainly does not give us the ability to accurately judge others.
We try to judge ourselves and we love to judge others. It gives us a sense of control over our lives, control that is not ours to have.
We are only by grace able to live fully when we are guided by God’s love, faith, and hope. That will fill up any day we wish to give over to them, and then some.
Ready or not: Hang on to your hat, it’s another of God’s days for us.