I love the phrase ‘I was minding my own business’.
It is a particular favourite prelude to something happening to change the whole business that I was minding at the time.
So.
I was minding my own business when I bumped into this blog entry about The Hardest Truth by Keith Giles. Read it. It is a good read.
I don’t know about you, but when I come across some verses from time to time I like to read the verses, and then read them in their context – not just a verse or two around them, but the same section.
Now I am aware that when I read Ezekiel 16 God is talking to Israel. God is really quite upset and amazingly merciful all in the same prophecy, which is typical of the prophecies and the nature of God – always holy and just, always merciful and compassionate.
So the God aspect of things is awesome. It’s the Israel perspective that gets me thinking. for here we have a narrative of how a child is left for dead, and is then rescued and given amazing love, provision and care. When all that happens the reaction is get all arrogant, get all selfish, whore out and completely forsake the help given.
That was Israel. God is talking to them.
Yet isn’t God talking to me as well? Isn’t He talking to people who claim to be saved and then live their lives whoring out God-given talents, gifts and abilities for things that don’t give glory to God? Isn’t He having the same right to make the accusation against so-called Christians who express characteristics other than compassion, mercy, grace, forgiveness and humility?
Then there’s the verse that Giles highlights about the real sin of Sodom in verses 49 and 50. Overfed, haughty, unconcerned, not helping poor and needy. Those are words we have to check ourselves by, especially in a culture that not only allows these factors but in a fast-food, consumer-driven culture celebrates them.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
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