Looking up, still
This week brings no relief of relentless reminders that we are living in a fallen world. Our son's illness continues to wreak havoc on his brain. Beyond a miracle, treatment resistant schizophrenia is a progressive disease. Mystifying, stubborn and cruel. And if the illness isn't sad enough, add fallen people who try to create and maintain a system of care for the most difficult to treat and well, you get the messy picture.
It isn't pretty.
But today, instead of letting this fallen world reality consume my heart and emotions, I am looking up with help from God and His Word. I'm letting this reminder press me into looking to an even greater reality. Right there in that garden where the biggest blunder of all time occurred. The Fall (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve disobey God and sin and death enter this place just as surely as God said it would.
Fallen. Sinful. Death destined people.
Yet...a plan is about to be introduced. An incomprehensible plan of redemption. "In his confounding defiance of what we deserve, God himself undertakes to save his people. He does this in Jesus Christ, the second Adam (Rom. 5:12-19)" (The Gospel Transformation Bible, Commentary p. 9).
Whispers of the coming Messiah, right there in that garden of the Fall from the pages of Genesis. And so I thought this morning, if God can create and carry out a glorious and unthinkable plan of redemption for this terrible, awful Fall: Is there any situation, sickness, sin, failing, trial that God can not redeem for His glory? Is there anything beyond His wise, loving, sovereign, redemptive hand?
Oh He may not, and rarely ever, answers my prayers the way I think He would or should. But can I not trust my God? If He put immeasurable grace on display in the face of the worst event on this planet, and He never changes, then surely I will wait and look for His redeeming hand in our current trials.
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"
~ Romans 8:32
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore. ~ Psalm 121:1~8
It isn't pretty.
But today, instead of letting this fallen world reality consume my heart and emotions, I am looking up with help from God and His Word. I'm letting this reminder press me into looking to an even greater reality. Right there in that garden where the biggest blunder of all time occurred. The Fall (Genesis 3). Adam and Eve disobey God and sin and death enter this place just as surely as God said it would.
Fallen. Sinful. Death destined people.
Yet...a plan is about to be introduced. An incomprehensible plan of redemption. "In his confounding defiance of what we deserve, God himself undertakes to save his people. He does this in Jesus Christ, the second Adam (Rom. 5:12-19)" (The Gospel Transformation Bible, Commentary p. 9).
Whispers of the coming Messiah, right there in that garden of the Fall from the pages of Genesis. And so I thought this morning, if God can create and carry out a glorious and unthinkable plan of redemption for this terrible, awful Fall: Is there any situation, sickness, sin, failing, trial that God can not redeem for His glory? Is there anything beyond His wise, loving, sovereign, redemptive hand?
Oh He may not, and rarely ever, answers my prayers the way I think He would or should. But can I not trust my God? If He put immeasurable grace on display in the face of the worst event on this planet, and He never changes, then surely I will wait and look for His redeeming hand in our current trials.
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"
~ Romans 8:32
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore. ~ Psalm 121:1~8
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