A First Time Voyage....through the Old Testament
It has been amazing to see, and gain an amazing perspective of our God in reading His Word. The Old Testament is indescribable. Just a few things have stood out to me, which follow.... And I want to share what God is showing me with all of you. Along with sharing with you all my objective is also to process these things in such a way that I internalize them... that I am transformed. I hope you also will help identify any area of insufficieny and help me align Biblically.
- On Creation Genesis 1,2
- He is the Creator. Out of nothing, God made the earth by his power; He founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding. Psalm 19 comments:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where
their voice is not heard
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world
The coolest thing is that by taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse not to believe. - Creation rightfully responds to our Creator-King. He tells the sun to shine here and it does. He tells the waters of earth to stop here or go there and it obeys His voice. He tells the one with a bleeding disorders platelet's to clot and they facilitate proper clotting.... yet we look Christ in the face and say "No". For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.
This rebellion, sin, gives voice to the current groan of creation. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, all creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
This rebellion, which began with Adam and Eve, we take initiative to partake in . We have an inherent propensity to sin, that is to not listen to our Creator. Because of this, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness, because the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! Paul's letter to Romans comments:People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand
- We were created to have dominion over creation/stuff; yet, often we permit stuff to dominate our lives. In American Christian culture I see a dangerous tendency within myself to live for my stuff, give my life for my stuff. With such submission of living I give my life for the pursuit of the temporary while neglecting the eternal.
For instance, (a rabbit hunt ensuing here) a newspaper I some time ago Headlined, "First Baptist Church _____________ (you fill in the blank) completes $23 million dollar building project." This article went on for a page or so. Also on the front page was a smaller article that said something like, "Baptist Mission relief funds sent to Sudan" How much did we raise to send? $5,ooo....really? That is not enough to get a plane to Sudan much less one drop of water. I am NOT saying that we don't need places to worship; however, lets put this in perspective:- Today (Oct 2008) over a billion people live (and die) in desperate poverty. (less than a dollar a day).
- Close to two billion others live on less than two dollars a day.
- 30,000 children today will brethe their last breath due to either starvation or a preventable disease.
We are not inconvenienced by this extreme poverty because those stricken by it are not only poor... they are powerless Literally millions of them are quietly dying in relative obscurity, and we can comfortably ignore them in our affluence, pretending like they don't even exist. Will not God measure the integrity of our faith by our concern for the poor? - The last thing that stands out to me is the climax of creation.... US! God made us in His own image. He breathed life into us. Wow! While working as a student nurse in my ob/gyn rotation I got to work in the nursery. Nothing I learned during this clinical resounded within me greater than this:
I will give thanks to You,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well Psalm 139:14
While the creation is full of glory of God,( I mean look at only our solar system where the sun is so massive that it could fit 1.3 million of our earths inside it. It may not look that big, but it is. It hangs in space 93 million miles way from us - and that just our solar system!) It seems to me (I am biased) that the human body declares the glory of God with greater volume than a galaxy ever could....
So when you look in the mirror today friends know that you are special. God made you.. you are different. You are unique. With love He formed you in your mother's womb. He fashioned you with great joy and great purpose. For those who know Him, He has rescued you out of darkness and brought you into the kingdom of marvelous light of His Son. In Him you have the forgiveness of sin having made peace with God through His blood on the cross. In Him you have new life because it was pleasing to God to quicken your dead, desolate, empty life with the gift of eternal life - You will never die. - *A snippet For Nurses* he he.....read it if you wish though....Humans were created from the beginning in the image of God. Herein lies the theological dimension of nursing practice; God bestowing on human beings His image makes us quite unique from the rest of creation. This biblical knowledge of creation holds immense and unsearched truth for many nurses that profess faith in Christ. Augustine, the greatest of the Latin church fathers, rightly observed that, "men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves". This should be the perspective nurses should have regarding their clients. Many people miss that they are a unique spiritual being, which is that they are a soul. Nurses should ask their clients about their spiritual preferences, and educate clients about the finite body and how it directly relates to an infinite soul
Forbid it Lord that we could be so blind as to trifle with and presume upon and despise and underestimate the wealth of His kindness and forbearance and long-suffering patience Could we be unmindful or actually ignorant of the fact that God's kindness is intended to lead us to repent, that is, to change our mind and inner man to accept God's will?
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is you life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4
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