there's something that keeps repeating itself over this week, in the word, from friends' testimonies, during quiet times, through the whispers of the Spirit...
1 Sam 2:
4 "The bows of the warriors are broken,
but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food,
but those who were hungry hunger no more.
She who was barren has borne seven children,
but she who has had many sons pines away.
[...]
7 The LORD sends poverty and wealth;
he humbles and he exalts.
[...]
9b "It is not by strength that one prevails"
The chinese version spoke out to me more: 人 都 不 能 靠 力 量 得 胜
It's so true... God subverts human pride everytime we glorify our selves and abilities. with the Enlightenment comes Disillusionment, with the Industrial Revoultions and pride in the capitalist system come the Great Depression and world wars, and on a personal scale, when we think things will logically work out because we've done everything possible to make it work out, it just doesn't sometimes. Acknowledging the great importance of human effort, I've come to also realise that victory or defeat, success or failure, being chosen or not, passing the interview or not, being alive or not, being favoured by your boss/ colleague/ professor/ friend or not - ultimately stems back to chance, as some people would have it, but I would term it God. So many things so out of our hands, and the more we try to grab at it the more it eludes us...
and naturally there's a personal issue of trust that God's dealing with. I'm growing in the knowledge that for all my weaknesses God's power is all the more evident in them, and despite them; for all the impossibilities that science, humans and the world's principles attach to me or my future, God transcends it all. All this, competitiveness, insecurity, jealousy, self-righteousness, self-seeking/ attention-seeking of the heart stem from an inability to rest in that fact that God's bigger than it all, to just... rest, and not be flinging my arms around in stress and despair trying to grab hold of the things that I desperately want.
Psalm 62:
5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
my hope comes from him.
Isaiah 30:
15 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength..."
Quietness and trust......
ah, Daddy, your love is sweet :)
