Spread out your petition before God, and then say, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” The sweetest lesson I have learned in God’s school is to let the Lord choose for me.
~D.L. Moody
The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”
~Mark 4:41
Oh beloved, there is this horrible and beautiful aspect to a human being. We are imbued with and carry the very image of G_d. However, in this imbuing comes an incredible amount of authority. For we are the only ones in creation who can simply ignore the One who made us – and tell Him to leave us alone.
All of creation is under His authority, and exists for His good pleasure. This is most surely true. However, it does seem to be within the purview of His pleasure that He would create persons who could freely love Him – and who conversely – could freely reject Him. It is for freedom that He set us free by His death, burial, and resurrection.
This Infinite One, who Loves us with a Love bigger than infinity does indeed Love us so much that He would have died for us even if none of us had chosen to love Him back. So, it is in knowing this truth that we are both free to Love Him all the more – and to see the folly of exercising our freedom to reject Him.
Said simply – are we idiots? An infinitely Loving, infinitely powerful, infinitely good Being gave His very own life for us, that we might live. And we want to reject this kind of Love? All the things we look for by trying to do it on our own, are answered through the Life and Love shown in the life and love of Jesus while He walked among us.
Can we see it? Oceans, demons, planets, animals, galaxies, sub-atomic particles, gravity and time all simply bow to the Self-Evident authority of the Authority of the Universe. Yeah, even demons who left their habitation in a play to try and take over sometime in the past KNOW they are defeated. Just read about how they address Jesus whenever there is a conversation in the Gospels. They have heard and seen the truth that all is finished for them but the consummation of the judgement they will face.
Oceans, particles and planetary systems simply rest and move and have their being in the superstructure of the goodness of creation. They have the seeming good sense to understand that there is no existence apart from the will of their Maker.
Yet we spit in His face. Amazing…
Now, most surely there will come a day when all of creation will bend the knee in recognition of the Authority of the One who Was and Is and Is to Come. But even on that day, G_d will recognize the authority of the ones He made in His own image to reject Him and go their own way – alone and stuck in space and time – forever.
Shall we not abandon this folly that G_d is a mean and hurtful god that throws people into hell? Yes we shall surely abandon this folly. Only a G_d of the greatest glory and honor and Love and Grace and strength and goodness could let someone spit in His face without utterly destroying them – or even precluding their very existence.
No, G_d allows the the gods He has created to keep their domains. It is just that these domains will be the most horrible place to exist. They will be a pit of a place that only contains the fire of hatred and loneliness and bitterness and torment that exists apart from the Righteousness and peace and joy that fills the Domain of the One True King.
May this writer repeat himself? Are we idiots?
