Meekness is giving up the right to be right.
~ Jim Freed
Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
~ Proverbs 22:15
There is beloved, this terrible aspect to who we are as children of His very own. We are still child-ish in so many ways. Oh, the ways become more subtle, but at their root they simply as simple as a baby throwing a fit when they don’t get their way.
This writer has recently come through a micro-burst of a storm wherein he had to protect one of his six children from a woman in the house who was abusing him. This protective action is a “no-brainer” for anyone with the shortest of brain-stems. A parent keeps a little child from being hurt by big people. Period.
What will happen, though, in any situation like this is that the perpetrator is already a bit sick. And in their sickness, they may not even be able to see that they are really hurting the child they are hurting. And when confronted and even caught, they may begin to deflect and begin going through the machinations of trying to bring other people into the situation and shift blame from themselves onto their accuser.
And worse, the people being brought into situations like this may actually take sides with the perpetrator. This dynamic occurs more often than it seems. Many people simply cannot believe that a certain person is capable of the sin of hurting an innocent child. Perhaps they have a broken picture of the total brokenness of mankind… or perhaps they have an inaccurate picture of the protector in a given situation.
Yeah, this is this writer’s life at this moment. And today, as i was going into my noon-time devotions, i began crying out to Him for some answers. Should i contact a counselor? Should i try to get the other person to understand? It really hurt to know, REALLY KNOW i was doing the right thing, and that a friend really had the wrong picture of me now.
And then i heard it in my spirit.
A dear friend – over a year ago – had spoken some words that now made the deepest sense they had ever meant to me. “Meekness is giving up the right to be right.” And it was in this moment that i felt the deep chagrin of the growing believer….
Oh wow, do i have a long way to go.
Everything in my “theology” tells me to let go and let the One who can really handle things do the handling. Yet, when the rubber met the road, i simply began worrying what people thought about me more than whether what i did was right. The foolishness still bound up in my heart became so very apparent. And, oh wow, it makes one grimace for a second.
But G_d!
Then the words from Deuteronomy and Psalms and Proverbs and Hebrews and Revelation began to pour through me: He disciplines those He loves. And He does it to put them at peace. He does it to both reveal AND remove the latent foolishness in a surrendered believer. And as much as these moments hurt – they are the faithful wounds made by the best Friend we could ever have. And they are not wounds that injure, but rather wounds that lance the boils of foolishness and pride in our lives so as to let them drain fully and cleanly.
And then He shared a picture of where we all really are right now. We are in eternity. And somewhere soon within this very moment, HE will set all these things straight in front of all creation. He will bring the full truth to bear on every situation in our lives and mete out the Justice that only He is qualified to bring to bear.
So, the work He has begun continues in one silly blogger in Jakarta. Surely it will be completed on That Day. But, perhaps i am a bit closer to understanding that there is only One Person i need to please, and that He is already very much in Love with me and that His thoughts toward me are magnificently only for peace and not for evil.
