Dai­ly Reflec­tion
June 26, 2013

Today’s scrip­ture read­ings seem to be about God’s promis­es.  In Gen­e­sis, we hear the sto­ry of God’s promise to an aged Abram, that his descen­dants will be as numer­ous as the stars.  The psalmist pro­claims, “The Lord remem­bers his covenant for­ev­er” and “Look to the Lord in his strength; seek to serve him con­stant­ly”.  In Matthew, Jesus warns the dis­ci­ples to be aware of false prophets, who come in sheep’s cloth­ing, but under­neath are rav­en­ous wolves.  Jesus tells the dis­ci­ples, “by their fruits you will know them”.

There’s an old hymn that I love called Stand­ing on the Promis­es.  It’s an upbeat song that makes you feel like march­ing.  The open­ing refrain is:

Stand­ing on the promis­es of Christ my King,
Through eter­nal ages let His prais­es ring,
Glo­ry in the high­est, I will shout and sing,
Stand­ing on the promis­es of God.

And there’s a song by Tenth Avenue North called Worn.  In that song the refrain is:

I know I need to lift my eyes up, but I’m too weak, life just won’t let up.

I think I usu­al­ly tend to iden­ti­fy with the lat­ter song.  I want to stand on God’s promis­es, but life tends to knock you down.  It’s dif­fi­cult to stand on God’s promis­es when you’re flat on your back.  It’s hard to focus on God, when I’m focused sole­ly on myself.

As a par­ent I’ve run into numer­ous sit­u­a­tions where I’ve had to hold a young child while they receive a shot or the doc­tor stitch­es them up.  I can explain to my son that this is to make them bet­ter and I want to help them.  They still have that look in their eyes ask­ing, “why are you help­ing this per­son hurt me?  Shouldn’t you be sav­ing me from them?”  As a par­ent, I can tell you, that look real­ly hurts.  I won­der if that’s how God feels when I com­plain to him that I should not be in this sit­u­a­tion or He should have saved me from my cur­rent cir­cum­stance. Good grief, God, don’t you care about me?  Don’t I mat­ter?  I think it’s nor­mal to feel this way.  When God told Abram he was going to give Abram some land, Abram’s response was to ask how he could know this would real­ly happen.

Even Jesus cried out, My God, My God, why have you for­sak­en me?  I also know that Christ endured some pret­ty hor­ri­ble things because of his love for me.  If, instead of com­plain­ing and ask­ing God to res­cue me, I sim­ply focused on God’s love for me, his promise to be with me, that he will nev­er for­sake me and the fact that he wants the best for me, maybe I would be bet­ter able to han­dle some of life’s inevitable storms.

God’s promis­es are not some­thing I can earn.  And, hap­pi­ly, they aren’t some­thing I can lose by com­plain­ing too much.  Know­ing Christ does not guar­an­tee a smooth ride through life.  Just the oppo­site.  How­ev­er, know­ing Christ means I can weath­er any­thing life throws at me.

My prayer today is for those of us whose prayers are focused sole­ly on our­selves.  That our focus would be on God and his will for us as his ser­vants.  That we would per­sis­tent­ly pray for God’s guid­ance in our lives.