Greetings Dear Reader,
I love giving gifts to others. I know that part of that extends from my desire
to do this in the right way. An
understanding that is vital to gift-giving is that once the gift is given, you no
longer own it. Once the gift is received
it carries with it a responsibility to stewardship and gratitude.
A gift received requires that for the sake of honor, we say
thank you, we use what we are given wisely, and that we understand that some gifts
carry with them great responsibility. I
realize that this may be an odd thing with which to begin, but it will bear the point
for us quite well.
Life is a gift. It is
ours to live as we wish but the gift comes with great responsibility to the one
who gave it to us. When I gave my eldest
Son his first car, he knew that he had to care for it, drive responsibly, and
be accountable for his use of the car.
On a grander scale, the life we are given by the Father is like this.
We think that we are entitled due to own autonomy. We think that our life is ours and that we
control aspects of the world. This is a
lie we tell ourselves to believe that we can do as we wish without consequence. This leads to questions concerning the
character of God. As I said yesterday, the
questions are not wrong but the way in which we ask them is vital.
The questions about the Father’s character are not new. If I ask them in faith that there is a reasonable
answer, then I am on the path to truth.
If I question God’s character from a stance of anger or judgment, I am
forgetting that he literally owns all of creation including our lives. We are his to do with as he wishes. Instead of making us puppets, he has given us a
measure of autonomy to choose whether or not to love him.
We are his because he made us. Then, when we rejected him, selling our relationship
with him for “freedom” to do as we please, he bought us out of the consequences
of that transaction. I am not ignorant of
the fact that we use God’s omniscience to question the morality of his allowing
us to fail. He knows, however, that his
plan is to redeem us from the failures of our choices to use his gift
poorly.
One of the reasons we do not get to know why is that we may
not be able to comprehend the perspective necessary to understand why. If, however, I begin with the understanding
that no matter what I choose to do with the life given me by the Father, that he
still loves me, I can also understand a wee bit more of his purpose. Remember that the command that is greatest is
to love the Father. Then it is to love
each other. The God of all things is
primarily interested in love. This is
why the gift of life is precious and why I must ask my questions out of love
for him. It makes the why less of a
problem and as we will consider tomorrow, less offensive.
I will focus on loving the Father and when I do not
understand, I will trust him as I should a Father who loves me. It is all his and is in his hands. It is all an opportunity to have faith and
renew my love for him in every situation.
It is how we follow the Son. It
is how we use this gift of life we are given.
Wishing you joy in the journey,
Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every
writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a
homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure
store.”
(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Every human story is part of the great story that leads
to the Father getting everything back to Good.
Contacts for Aramis
Thorn:
#aramisthorn
Bookings: aramisthorn@aramisthorn.com
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