Ensign: What If God Was One Of Us?

 

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 3 January 2014

[An older one I've written, but it says something to us now. – David]

Last weekend I had the opportunity to re-read "Flatland", a late 19th century novel where all the characters are to our eyes two-dimensional figures like squares, circles, and triangles. The main character, A. Square, was elevated by Lord Sphere, a visitor from the third dimension of Spaceland, to see his own land from the Sphere's perspective. When returned home and given the commission to preach the "Gospel of the Three Dimensions", A. Square is promptly locked away and repeatedly frustrated because he can't prove to his fellows of two dimensions the third dimension of height.

Relating the unrelatable or relating TO the unrelatable is a more subtle problem to many of us than we realize. Try teaching a recipe to someone who's hardly ever seen the inside of a kitchen or a school lesson on the first day of class -- very often, that's the epitome of chaos! So was teaching my kids to walk; eventually, though, they learned to do it because they saw others (like Mommy and Daddy) do it successfully and practiced themselves. I think we can all attest that just walking is NOT as easy as we make it look; we're just used to it.

Being one of God's children is not as easy as the "super Christians" make it look. And if you back them into a corner, they'll admit it ... NOBODY is super in the kingdom of God because even at our best -- that is, even when we're the most God-honoring, we still fall short of God's glory because we all sin. (Romans 3:23) But God couldn't just offer a blanket amnesty, in our legal sense of the term, because we would be required to change nothing. We'd still have the sin, the separation from God, we started out with and couldn't come unto Him.

There's a popular song from the mid 1990s that you still hear from time to time with the chorus, "What If God Was One Of Us?" According to the Gospels in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), God did indeed become one of us, born two thousand years ago out of heaven and into a smelly, dirty world in the tiny blip-on-a-map town of Bethlehem. "And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21) To save us from our sins, from the consequences of our chosen separation from God -- death (Romans 6:23).

God must have known from the moment Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden that there's no way we could return to Him on our own. It may not be so much that we like sinning but that we don't see a way out of such a life or anything more to life than what will separate us from our Creator. (That's piling on negatives if I ever heard it ...) "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Through Jesus Christ, Who actually walked on Earth and knew what it was like to get tired, be lonely, not have enough month left at the end of the money (seriously, don't you think there was more He wanted to do, when working as a carpenter and in His ministry, that He couldn't do on His own), we've got someone Who knows what it's like, what WE'RE like in ways be don't even admit to ourselves. Through Someone Who knows, someone here can change and be forgiven to start a new life. That's the truth!

Sincerely yours,

David

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encouragement too! If you find that I'm not or you want me to get lost, just let me know -- thank you!

We praise You, Lord, for this beautiful day You have given us! Please pray with me for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence and for communities around our world. Lord, we need Your strength to fight the natural disasters and human ills to ultimately treat the cause and not just the symptoms; until we who have power change, this world You have made us stewards of won't either.

Thank You, Lord, for all those in leadership and service here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have been given as well as the promise of new life through Your Son. And may we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.