God and life
I was surprised this morning as I was reading the Bible (yes, I'm still going strong on a new year's kick, but leviticus and others loom in the distance...). I was coming to the end of Genesis, which in my mind is one of those pinnacle moments of redemption and forgiveness and grace and all the like as Joseph and his brothers re-unite and there is crying and celebration, and it is just a wonderful story. There have been movies made about much weaker story lines than this, but I digress.
And then it comes...
Joseph's famous line to his brothers after they come begging for him to spare their lives and to not kill them (which they thought he would do after their father died). In response to their pleading, he says this, (drum roll for the God is sovereign camp...) "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good". And so we stop, and we breathe and think, 'man, just shows how God can turn any bad situation into a good one,' and so the sunday school lesson goes. BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE END OF THE SENTENCE!!!
"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." It is not as if he side steps the wonder of God's sovereignty, but he says its all because
God cares about life! Joseph is saying to his brothers, 'don't worry about it, God put me here so that he could tell me about the famine that was coming, so that I could tell Pharoah to start saving grain so that people won't starve!' It was all about life and God loving life and it wasn't even a story about a great revival. It could have been, it surely could have been a story about how God used Joseph to spread the gospel among all of Egypt, but as we know from history, Egypt was hardly a pious nation at any point in its storied past. God loves life. God loves salvation and redemption, but God also loves common grace that preserves life. Our goal isn't only to get people into the "Christian lifeboat," our goal is to love life, other peoples' life even, enough that we work toward its preservation. I'm not very good at this, in fact, I so look forward to glory sometimes (usually after a time of seeing my sin very clearly and wanting to do it no more), that I fail to remember that life is good and that God would have me to enjoy it and work toward others preserving and enjoying of it. I've claimed to be pro-life because I just kind of knew that killing the innocent is a cruel and unjust thing, but I have found something on which I can hang my hat and say, "the Bible told me so."
Experiences with a U-Haul and a cool story (but you'll have to wait until the end for that...)
For the 4 readers who even know that I have a blog and who are willing to put up with my sometimes month long absences, this one is for you.
We went on an awesome vacation with my family before Christmas, an eastern Carribean cruise. Tons of fun, and that's an understatement. For a few days after that we were in Louisiana to spend Christmas with Sarah's family. I went hunting for the first time, which was alot of fun. Everyone talks about deer hunting being very boring. Usually you have to walk for an hour or more, then sit sometimes for hours on end. This is a recount of my first hunt:
Park the truck
Walk to Tree: 15 minutes
Sit down on ground next to tree and wait for deer: 10 minutes
See 6 point buck and shoot him: 1 shot, .0004583 seconds
I hit the little guy, and then drug him back to a spot where we could bring the truck to pick him up. It was awesome, and perfect for my impatient self.
No for the U-Haul story. If you would consult our friends the Howells, they will advise you to never rent a U-Haul, ever. They now recommend Penske, or some other similar outfit. We actually got one of U-Haul's new trucks, so we weren't complaining. After we unloaded our stuff at our house in Charlotte (our new home), we needed to take the U-Haul to get a mattress. I pulled out of the driveway, and snapped the phone line off of the pole because the U-Haul is 12ft. tall as the sticker in my rearview mirror reminds me. Casualty #1.
Next we head into the mall to see if Dillards has any mattresses, as we have some store credit remaining there from our wedding. (see below picture).
What you see is the 7ft. clearance bar that I managed to mangle with the aforementioned 12ft. tall U-Haul. Almost as funny as realizing what my dumb self had done was seeing the cars who were trying to enter the parking lot, now trying to pass the American Gladiator gauntlet pole that was swinging from side to side. I'm such an idiot, as I now realize that I am not in a parking lot, but rather the top deck of a parking garage with a, you guessed, it 12ft. tall, 26ft!!! long U-Haul truck.
And we're not done. I thought I could make a U-turn after leaving the mall parking lot and ended up in somebody's front yard. Not just 1 wheel, and I'd love to tell you it was only 2 or 3 wheels. But no, all 4 were now fully in somebody's front yard, merely a few feet from their front flower bed. I had misjudged my turning radius by 10's of feet. Terrible, I couldn't stop. I hope it hadn't rained in the previous month. 26ft long U-Haul=heavy=large ruts in soft yard.
So now for the cool story. I had one of those mornings at church where I felt the weight of my sin more clearly than I do at other times. I felt guilty for a lack of being in the word, and generally felt as if God was probably upset with me for these things. Why do I think this? Why do I continue to not believe that God loves me and has already made the decision to do so forever? Someone asked Martin Luther why he continues to preach the gospel of grace week after week without deviation, and he answered saying that he stands up there and looks at a group of people who look like they need the gospel week after week. This afternoon Sarah and I went to look at a sofa, chair, and ottoman that we had found on craig's list. It was a lot of money to spend, and we were both questioning whether or not it was the right decision for us at this time. So, feeling guilty that the Lord has been an afterthought for much of this week, we decided to ask for wisdom in making the decision and to help us discern if the couch was a good buy or not. Amazingly, as soon as we walked in, Sarah could tell that we did not want this furniture. Of course, wanting to be polite to the sellers, I did not know this until we got in the car. I on the other hand, decided to pick the items up to tell how heavy they were (generally speaking, heavy furniture=quality furniture). All of it was light, and that made up my mind.
Moral to this story: God is faithful and loving and caring, when we are not. He is not mad with us when we are ignorant of Him. If you are in Christ, you are loved, deeply loved. And not only that, as Sarah and I found out today, you are cared for and looked out for. That is wonderful, in my humble opinion (though I am rarely humble about anything).
