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Gleanings From The Word

Category: devotional

  • What Do You See? Opening our spiritual eyes.

    What Do You See? Opening our spiritual eyes.

    stylized Adam and Eve hiding in the garden

    We aren’t very far into the Bible when things go terribly wrong. You know the story.

    Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.  For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Genesis 3:1-8 esv

    Now, prior to this, both Adam and Eve walked in the garden in a close personal relationship. They knew the Lord as intimately and personally as it is possible for a person to know Him. They understood His love, compassion and mercy.

    What changed? The obvious answer is they sinned. Yet, what moved them from joy to fear?

    With sin-filled eyes, we cannot see God as He truly is. They now saw God through distorted lenses and created a harsh God of their own imaginings. It’s what we do.

    Some see God as a Monty Python-like foot ready to stomp on us for any sin. Others see Him as a cosmic genie there to grant our every wish and desire. For some people, he’s a doddering old man who either cannot see our sins or, if he does, is unable or unwilling to do anything about them.

    There are those who pretend that He doesn’t exist. The great civilizations of the past imagined Him as a pantheon of very flawed human-like capricious gods.

    The truth is that the God revealed to us in the Bible is none of those things. He is benevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He loves us so much that Jesus came and died so that we could be restored into a right relationship with Him and be adopted into His family.

    He is too beautiful and wonderful for us to understand with our sin-filled minds. Even as believers whose sins have been atoned for do not yet see him clearly, but the day will come when we will. He will open our spiritual eyes to see the truth.

    For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:32

    I can hardly wait. What about you?

    Be blessed

    Kevin

    Gleanings From The Word – Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life. 

    On a similar theme

    Do you see things through the eyes of faith?
  • Frogs -Some things are not as they appear

    Frogs -Some things are not as they appear

    Frog Rock, New Hampshire

    Another version of this image popped up on my social media. It had  obviously been greatly enhanced, but I was intrigued enough to do some research. This is Frog Rock, located in New Boston, New Hampshire.

    From one angle, it does indeed resemble a large frog. The frog was once a popular tourist destination. I’ve never been there, but if I ever get to New Boston, I’ll be sure to check it out.

    It’s a 10-foot-tall glacial erratic (a boulder left behind in a random place by melting glaciers). Glacial erratics can be found in many places; a well-known one is the Big Rock found on the outskirts of Okotoks, Alberta. They can be huge. One source speaks of massive erratics, “one large glacial erratic in Germany measures 3 by 6 km (2 by 4 mi) and is 9 m (30 ft) thick. Near Cooking Lake, Alberta, one of several large glacial erratics, which is called the Cooking Lake (Number 6) megablock, covers an area of at least 10 km2 (4 sq. mi), has a length of 4.0 km (2.5 mi), and is about 10 m (33 ft) thick. 

    As I thought about how well the random stone in New Hampshire mimics a stone, I was reminded that not everything is as it appears, and not every promise is true. The rock is called a big frog and looks like one, but it is not and will never be a real frog.

    Mirages in the desert or on the highway promise water that isn’t there. Politicians make promises that, even if they genuinely hoped to deliver, will never be fulfilled. Friends, family, and even church members can let us down. All the trinkets and whiz-bang-gizmos we long for and buy never deliver the fulfillment we crave.

    The book of Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, who regaled us with tales of how he had everything a person could ever want. Each task, triumph, and possession promised fulfillment, but none of them delivered.

    Ecclesiastes is a short book, an easy read, and often overlooked by many Christians. It’s probably best known for a repeated line, “Meaningless, everything is meaningless” (or “Vanity, everything is vanity”, in some translations). Yet, even that claim is untrue in a sense. Solomon recognizes at the end that there is something that has meaning, a purpose for our lives.

    The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Ecclesiastes 12:13 ESV

    No matter what your circumstances tell you, or the lies you have believed, you have value and purpose.

    You were created in the very image of God and are loved enough that Jesus died for you while you were still a sinner. He is preparing a home for you in heaven.

    While we wait, we grow to be like Jesus and serve the Lord. It’s a noble quest that will deliver exactly as promised.

    Kevin

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