GOD WOULD BE ASHAMED OF HIMSELF
I can't help it. I know there is profound evil in the world and that we humans can descend to depths of wickedness that can take our breath away. I know that! Listen, I know that!
But in the midst of all that, there they are, men and women, boys and girls who are as gallant as any movie star we've ever seen. The gracious Holy One is still at work in the human family and in their tens of millions in every generation they astonish the watchers who find it hard to believe what their eyes and ears tell them.
The Hebrew writer speaks of men and women of faith who were stoned to death, sawn asunder and who lived in caves, persecuted and tormented; all of them, waiting for God to fulfil his promises. But though commended for their faith and though it is true that the world was not worthy of them they died without receiving what had been promised (11:37-38).
Exciting words these, marvelous stories and daring characters! A book full of that stuff sells well, sermons like that preach well and don’t the congregations love them! And so they should! But what makes an inspiring book or movie is that it has an end and the end makes all the hurt and struggle well worthwhile. The movie ends, the credits roll and we leave pleased that the injustice was dealt with, the wrongs were righted, the truth triumphed and we drive home feeling that it’s great to be alive!
In the days that follow the surge subsides, the flame dies down and we’re face to face with the same stubborn entrenched evils—inside and all around us. Widespread goodness seems to be something we dream about. It doesn’t matter that there truly is thriving goodness that’s just as stubborn and just as ingrained as the evils we see. It’s easy to be disheartened. The goodness and its power seems to be too little too late and early promise comes to nothing. Doesn’t that seem to be the usual, isn’t it what breaks the hearts of once flaming reformers? Sure it is, that’s why Lord Morley said, "For the wettest of wet blankets give me the middle-aged man who more than the rest was a visionary in his youth." Pretty sad commentary that, but it probably has more truth in it than we’d like to admit.
There was this vulnerable handful of people, feeling the bite of famine, they went down to Egypt and ended up enslaved and brutalized. But one of them came to believe that he was God’s chosen to do the impossible, and bless me, that multitude walked out of a ruined Egypt, walked through a belligerent sea that blocked their way...but only to find themselves wandering in a moody, killing wilderness. But the believers whipped the wilderness and settled in a tiny fertile land only to find themselves vomited out again and scattered throughout the nations of the world. Two steps forward, three steps back—so they felt and so they experienced, though there were those among them who kept saying that however it looked and however many disappointments there were they were still on the road to glory.
There was this young man in whom the realization grew that he was God’s chosen to redeem a sinful and hurting world. You know the facts well. A young Messiah, the gathered masses, the healed, the now smiling, the sense of glad expectancy and then...then the dispersing crowds, the gathering clouds, the threatened and threatening authorities, the vested interests closing ranks, a hurried and shameless trial and a rush to the hanging tree. Then the followers, slinking back to Galilee with hopes dashed, back to villagers that gave them the "I told you so" looks, back to dreamless fishing, cold wet nights and the all too hum drum and familiar. The adventure had ended; a firecracker that fizzled out without an explosion!
We can hear the critics whisper to each other at the sight of the disappointed believers. Moe than that, we can imagine the depressed believers sum it all up as a lost venture. Well, it was too much to expect, the dreams were too grand and their hearts had flown too high. Bit silly really, now that they mused on it as they hauled in their nets or locked themselves in upper rooms or trudged their way to Emmaus. They were nothing more than ordinary people but...but didn’t they dream well? Weren’t they marvelous at imagining a glorious life and nation and world? Too bad God wasn’t as big as their dreams and vision of him.
But that wasn’t how it was to end! The ancients, battered and beaten, hounded and hurt, had died believing and it was God that generated their dreams and their faith. He had said such and such and they had believed him! They rose to the challenge; they defied the world with all its cynicism, moral gloom and crushing disappointment and died expecting! Weren’t they glorious in all their ordinariness? Doesn’t Hebrews 11, if you have half an imagination, read better than the finest Hollywood epic?
If God hadn’t worked it out he would have been ashamed to link his name with people like that! It isn't difficult to hear even the friendly critics say, "Yahweh? Oh, yes, that’s the name they gave that god that Israel believed in, wasn’t it? The god that made all those promises that Israel believed? Hmmm. Sad isn’t it? They left everything to follow him. Too bad, really, that it all came to nothing. Pathetic that he wasn’t up to keeping his word. Oh well. There it is.")
And what of the young Messiah? It wasn’t possible, Peter said, for death to hold Jesus because he had trusted God with all his being, believing in God’s purpose and promise and dying with words of trust on his lips. If God hadn’t raised him to immortality and glory he would have been ashamed of himself. In trusting us God puts us to the test but in bringing us to believe in him God puts his own reputation on the line.
And we—because God said suffering precedes glory—staring down tsunamis, liver cancers, broken homes, moral losses, bereavements, public opinion and government nonsense, old age and loss of dignity—what of us? Will we live and die with glad hearts believing? If we do, God won’t be able to face us, won’t be able to look us in the eye if he doesn’t bring our dreams (his dreams in us) to a glorious conclusion.
He would be ashamed to admit he is our God.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com