relentless and ever relenting
At a retreat last winter, the visiting speaker introduced a concept familiar to seminarians and mostly new to the rest of us. That in reading the Bible we can get to know the principles of God; that is, by observing the trends in how God acts and does throughout time, we can learn what He is like.
This may seem basic but it blew my mind in how I viewed reading the Bible. Instead of a set of moral lessons or takeaway points (which honestly isn't such an exciting prospect of study), the Bible became a series of snapshot stories of God interacting with His people-- together forming a portrait of who God is. God is a real Person.
As I make my way through different parts of the Bible, I'm beginning to notice a few trends cropping up in the way God acts that show us His character:
The kicker in all this is that Jesus tells us later to be "perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect." These qualities that I read about God possessing, I must strive for in knowing God and wanting to be like God, if I can.
This may seem basic but it blew my mind in how I viewed reading the Bible. Instead of a set of moral lessons or takeaway points (which honestly isn't such an exciting prospect of study), the Bible became a series of snapshot stories of God interacting with His people-- together forming a portrait of who God is. God is a real Person.
As I make my way through different parts of the Bible, I'm beginning to notice a few trends cropping up in the way God acts that show us His character:
- God is relentless in pursuing His will. And His will often seems to be solely for men to know and recognize that He is God. He won't give up, and will go to great lengths to achieve this, even sometimes for the sake of individuals. In the book of Jonah, God bends the laws of nature to His will multiple times, all seemingly to try to bend Jonah's hard heart to have compassion on the Ninevites and tell them to get right with God.
- God is ever relenting, capable of incredible degrees of forgiveness. This is often simply impossible for humans to comprehend or emulate by nature. I went to Sunday School most of my life, and knew of the story of the evil King Ahab of Israel and the prophet Elijah-- the showdown with all the 450 prophets of Baal. However, what I didn't know was that despite all Ahab's vileness, all the prophets he killed, all the ways he ignored God and worshiped pagan gods, when Elijah prophesied to Ahab that his family would be destroyed and all his descendants cut off, Ahab repented, put on sackcloth, and fasted (1 Kings 21). And what shocked me was that God relented. At least partially; He said that the judgment would be held off until Ahab's son was in power, not Ahab himself. I can't help but wonder what Elijah thought as he heard that from God. I know that I don't understand forgiveness and grace enough to get it. But God can do it.
The kicker in all this is that Jesus tells us later to be "perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect." These qualities that I read about God possessing, I must strive for in knowing God and wanting to be like God, if I can.
