Sunday, 04 February 2007            

The Adult's Sunday School Class - Proverbs 22:10 & 11 Mocker or a pure heart?  

Scripture reading: #658

Vesper's - a one hour study @ 5 p.m. on Sundays: Matthew 7:7-11 "Ask, seek, find..." Join our verse-by-verse study through the Sermon on the Mount! 

Wednesday @ 7 - 8 p.m. A class on "Anger: the theological, psychological, emotional and social aspects of our temper."

He will carry you 

Deuteronomy 1.30 The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, 31. and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."

4.29 But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and obey him.

31. For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath.

"The LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you..." There! Don't blame God.

Most of our disasters-in-the-works are due in some part to bad decisions either by us, or by someone else - but it affects us. Other difficult or catastrophic situations, not attributable to someone's bad judgment, fall into a category I term, "It could have happened to anyone else, but it happened to happen to you."

As a person with a serious illness recently said, "People say, 'Why you?' and I wonder, 'Why not me?' Do I deserve better odds and treatment than anyone else in society?"

In our society we tend toward personal entitlement - we 'deserve' better and more and easier. If it doesn't happen in such an idyllic way, we question God – or blame Him.

I don't know that God will ever reveal to you or me in some dream or vision the times He 'carried' each of us, as is so poignantly told in that poem and song about seeing footprints in the sand.

I do know from Deuteronomy 1:31 that it has happened in the past. "There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."

What you and I need to remember is this: our God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy us...