Good Morning to All,
Psalm
37:7; “Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his
way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”
Everyone who has ever played sports in some
form of organized fashion, whether high school or college or city league or
even church league remembers that one player.
That one player who was always on the “cheaper” or “dirty” side of the
game. He would cheat at the game and get
away with it. He was always pulling
something that was shady or outside of the rules. He would push you in the back in a basketball
game or punch you in a football game. He
made the game a lot less fun than normal.
He made the game a task or a chore rather than a challenge.
The one universal truth about this type of
player is that he rarely, if ever, gets caught.
He will push the other player and then that second adage about sports
comes into play, “the second guy gets caught.”
It is as frustrating thing to experience when the bad guy seems to win
and the good guy seems to come up short.
There are times when we think this is true
in our faith life as well. Why does it
seem that some of the unbelievers have all the success while believers seem to
struggle to have anything at all? It
seems somewhat unfair; it should be the other way; at least we think.
First and foremost, we need to remember
that as Christians we measure success differently than the world does. The world measures by “stuff”, possessions
and other tangible things. We see
success as faith, loving relationships, reconciled families, people coming to
faith, suffering healed; in other words we see success in terms of human
condition. We see success in terms of
relationships that get healed, both between man and God and man to man. These are successes.
So we look at the world and we wait, we
wait for God. We wait for God to do the
wonderful thing that he has promised. We
wait for God to put an end to pain, to suffering, to injustice, to death. This will occur when Christ returns and
creation is restored and we are made perfect at his arrival. We wait, in joyful anticipation of God
intervening and ending death. We wait
with the total assurance that God will do as he has promised to do. God has promised us salvation, hope for life
eternal with him in everlasting glory.
We look forward to this coming but until it does we wait for God.
So as we wait, we take the opportunity to
serve God and give him praise and thanks by serving others, by bringing God’s
grace to them. We measure our success,
not by gold or silver, but by the love of God shared throughout our midst.
Gracious
and loving Father, through you we have salvation and we have hope. So we wait for you to finish our redemption
and bring it to completion. We wait for
your glorious return. Be with those who
are tempted by the world’s measure of success and are missing out on your great
love and peace. Guard and protect them
from the devil’s arrows. In Jesus’
precious name we pray, amen
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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