February 17, 2012

Prone to Wander

Give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for men. -Psalm 107
The nature of fallen man is to wander. to forget the often dramatic ways God has worked. We are attracted to the drama, we want to see God do big things, powerful things, things that defy the natural created order. We want Him to move in ways that cannot be explained and that skeptics can't argue with. And yet, God so often comes in stillness. In the quiet. And to hear Him in these places, we must commit ourselves to visit Him there.

We aren't any different than the people of Jesus day who had a hard time believing He was the King they were waiting for. He didn't come in power, or drama-laden festivities, He didn't ride in on a white horse with a shout, He didn't squelch his naysayers. Instead he came in smallness.

How He comes to me today and how he came long ago to this earth reveal who he is, what he's like. And how we should live.

Perhaps the way people respond to bigness vs smallness is more telling than we realize. The BIG gets our attention, but often leaves us craving for more. If more of that same BIGNESS doesn't come we get discouraged, lose heart, forget God and look for the next shiny object.

But small things...we have to stop and be still to even  notice them. And so often, these are the things that speak so deeply to us, that we remember. Thank you Jesus for coming in small ways, simple ways, but with so much power. Your still, small voice, when encountered, can break through torrents of emotion and brick walls reinforced with steel.

Psalm 107, however, is all about how God demonstrates His love in BIG and NOTICEABLE ways. These events come when we humble ourselves and cry out to him, when we are at the end of ourselves and our own power. Being humble is, then, a high place because it is where we access God. He draws near to the humble but resists the proud. Being rich, conversely, is a low place, the horizontal down on earth, man to man, human power working itself out, wearing itself out. There is glory in that only because it serves to bring us to humility when we burn our and have nothing to show that truly lasts.

So, walking with Jesus is about being small, walking humbly, crying out and seeing God's hand move. Why on earth do we crave anything more than that?

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