It isn’t unusual for me to prayerfully whine, “It’s not fair!” (usually when I’m sick, or short on cash, or jealous).
God: You never complain when circumstances fall out to your advantage. There’s no protest when someone you don’t like falls on unusually hard times. Seems to me that it isn’t “fair” that you’re after. What you really want is “special treatment.”
Me: Ouch!
Ponder this from Thomas Watson, Puritan preacher from the mid 1600s:
“God intermixeth mercy with affliction: he steeps his sword of justice in the oil of mercy . . . In the ark there was a rod and a pot of manna, the emblem of a Christian’s condition, mercy interlined with judgment.”
A deep thinker, our Mr. Watson.
Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard:
Matthew 20:13,15
But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius?
. . . Or are you envious because I am generous?’
A fair world would be just, but lacking compassion and grace.
James 2:13
Mercy triumphs over judgment.
We hear a lot about what’s fair:
Newsflash: God is NOT fair.
God is holy and perfect. In a fair kingdom, God would allow only holy and perfect people into heaven. In God’s kingdom, grace trumps fair.
From Blaise Pascal, mid-1600s:
“There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.”
Confession:
I have a consistency problem when it comes to whole-heartedness. It’s a daily (hourly?) problem.
Nobody even listened my idea, Lord. I’m soooo frustrated!
(it’s all about me — no heart)
Oh, Lord God, you don’t seriously expect me to talk about my faith with a stranger? It’s one thing to talk with you privately and quite another to talk about you with others.
(compromising with the world — half-heart)
O God, I’m having a hard time with whole heart. Don’t even want to think about soul, mind and strength.
A quick history of the three kings:
(from 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 Kings)
:
Whose heart do you have?
Luke 10:27 (NIV)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart . . .
So do you?
Many years ago, I participated in Walk Through the Bible lessons that described the first kings of Israel this way:
So, which king are you?
