God’s Gifts – Faithfulness

Life is hard and unfair and it is amazing that anyone trusts anyone after a good dose of lies, deceit, abuse, betrayal, and abandonment that can characterize so much of life for too many people. Families are struggling with divorce and addiction. Churches are struggling with child abuse and sexual scandals. Our political leaders get rich from payoffs, kickbacks, and crony capitalism. It is no wonder that so many people today are afraid of making any commitments to marriage, family, community, church, and nation.

The Bible makes it clear that God is faithful. We read in I Samuel 12:22, “The Lord will not forsake His People for His great name’s sake.” God promises to be our protection and shield (Genesis 15:1). God will provide and help us through the hard and unfair parts of life (Isaiah 41:10).

Our only hope is God and his promised faithfulness. In Matthew 2:1-11 we read the story of the kings visit to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. God not only leads the kings to Jesus to worship and adore Him, the gifts the kings provide will allow Joseph and Mary to have the money they will need for the years ahead, as they flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s revenge. Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh are worth a lot of money in Egypt in Jesus’ day, and would go a long way to get the young peasant couple, Mary and Joseph, through those hard years in a faraway land.

Of course, my good Bible scholars can point out that that sounds good, but how do you reconcile that with the pain and evil of the world. Everyone loves the shepherd story in Jesus’ birth narratives, but we always stop reading the visit from the kings before Herod takes his revenge by slaughtering all the infants in Bethlehem trying to kill Jesus. Christmas is not about genocide, so we don’t read that. But Christmas is all about life, and so we should not disregard it, because it teaches us much about life.

We must always remember life is hard, and unfair, and that is because we live in a fallen world. This world is not getting better, and neither are we. This flies in the face of the pop philosophy of our age, that human beings are basically good, and just do bad stuff. And if we could just make everything fair then the world would be a better place for everyone.

Our faith teaches us we are bad to the core and we are born that way. You don’t have to teach a child to lie to get out of trouble. You don’t have to teach a child how to manipulate people. They just learn to do it better when they watch us. A mother heard her five year old scream and races into the family room to see the one-year old yanking her hair. The mother comforts the older daughter with the words, “She didn’t know that would hurt.”

The mother races back in the room when she hears the one-year old screaming. Smiling, the older daughter says to her mom, “She knows now!”

We are sinful to our core, and we need help. That is why the Bible is a timeless book. It addresses God’s plan of salvation for the sins of the world. We may know more facts, but morally we will never change. We will always struggle with greed, lust, gluttony, laziness, arrogance, control issues, uncontrolled anger and fear. If the Lord chooses to let this world go for another 1000 years it will be very different technologically, but morally there will not be one iota of difference in people’s behavior and struggle with sin.

We have a choice. We can decide the evil around us is to great to believe in a faithful God, or we can turn to a faithful God and find help when life is hard and unfair. Which do you choose? God wants a relationship, not our comfort. I believe God is using all our life experiences to draw us closer to Him. Are you going through a difficult time? How is God using it to draw you closer to him?