The Affliction Gift


Psalm 117:91

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.

When we think of gifts, we imagine cool stuff, wrapped in shiny happy paper, and tied with a bow. Under the tree. Very few think of gifts as painful...they wouldn't really be gifts then. We can get bad gifts but the worst thing that can happen is that we put it in a closet, trash can, or do the dreaded re-gifting. Bad gifts don't typically inflict pain unless their is a sadist Santa in your life.

I actually met someone recently whose Dad's loves fruitcake. Now, that is a sick gift.

You'd think our gifts would make us appreciate the greatest gift-giver of all: God. He who has given us breath and life, the remarkable opportunity of existing.  Yet, if we bring strength to strength, our intelligence can lead us astray from having a mind for God. We believe in our intellectual emanations not based on divine wisdom. If we are powerful physically and enjoy good health, God's call can be drowned out by the shouts of self-sufficiency. Conceit rather than Christ.

 Our gifts can make us godless. Gain the whole world but lose our soul.

This is where adversity comes in as a gift. It interrupts the cycle of self-sufficiency where we get abundant empirical evidence that we are not enough. The haze of satiation is cleared by the biting winds of adversity which devour our complacency. Soon, we are left with crumbs of confidence. And, that can cause us to look up and to seek God and not down upon His gifts. That is the greatest gift.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shake the Dust: Anis Mojgani

Pslam 90:2 "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." I am not real certain where Anis Mojgani comes from belief-wise. Cats like him tend to be synchrestic spiritually rather than Christ-centered. Yet, this poem captures the spirit of Jesus. What this poem also needs is grace....we shake off sin and mortality and take on Christ and immortality. This is for the fat girls This is for the little brothers For the former prom queen And for the milk crate ball players This is for the school yard wimps And the childhood bullies that tormented them Shake the dust. This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them. This is for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns And for the men who have to hold down 3 jobs, Simply to hold up their children. For the nighttime schoolers And for the midnight bike riders trying to fly Shake the dust. For the two year olds who cann...
Read more

Thomas Jefferson & Jesus

Image
I was reminded today, by a friend's post on Facebook, that it is Thomas Jefferson's birthday. So, I had a little party on my own of watching two documentaries on him through Netflix Instant. There is much I admire about Jefferson, there is much I dislike. He is polarizing figure. Besides the owning of slaves, the second most odious character flaw was his castration of the New Testament . See my slice of his slicing. Live by the razor, die by the razor. I did learn a cool new word call Amphiboligism which means ambiguity. The arrogance of Jefferson is astounding as if he had a more accurate vantage point of Jesus after 17 centuries than Jesus's own contemporaries and colleagues. In an empirical and scientific sense, he is at a considerable disadvantage in his postulations. When my wife and I visited Monticello on our Honeymoon, the most memorable moment there --besides my downing a can of Pringles all at once (in my own version of the "Pursuit of Happiness" w...
Read more