8/2/96...

The older I get, the more I am amazed at things...

• I am amazed at how impatient I can get at His gentleness with me--which I sometimes mistake for lack-of-leadership, or aloofness, or insensitivity...
  

• I am amazed at how implicitly arrogant humans are. I spoke with two very, very bright people this past week about God. One believes that God's way of dealing with 'justice' and 'redress of wrongs' is inefficient, wasteful, and cruel. (In other words, that HIS ethical character is so much better than God's, that HE can set himself up as a judge of God's character and God's competence.). The other decided that since he could not detect a universal pattern of sexual ethics in nature, therefore God's revealed prescriptions in this area were either (1) purely arbitrary or (2) simply wrong. (In other words, they were better judges about these matters than the God who created the universe and people.) I suppose humans will never cease to make themselves into Gods...I suppose I do it every time I choose the Other way...
  

• I am amazed at God's heart for women. I had a precious woman recently tell me--with a wondrous joy--that she "knew God the Father in a way that ONLY daughters could." I have noticed that in the confrontation between Nathan the prophet and King David in 2 Samuel 12 that Nathan's parable has the man loving the sacrificial sheep "as a man loves his daughter." I have noticed the challenging examples of the female leaders of the early church--their ferocious commitment to the Lord of Love.
  

• I am amazed, more and more each day, at the implications of Psalm 115.16: "The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to man. "--for our accountability, for the problem of evil, for our expectations of governance.
  

• I am amazed at the last sentence in the passage of Luke 22.24ff, spoken by the God-man,: "Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. 25 Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. "...A servant-God breaks most of my pre-images of the heavenly Sovereign...
  

glenn miller, 8/2/96