It is Holy Week, 2021 and it seems that the world continues to crumble down around me. To watch the news is an exercise in taking the risk to be even more disappointed in my fellow man than I already was. Just when I think that my heart and my head can take no more, I'm reminded that the control of this world is not mine, and for that I am so thankful.
Hannah (age 9) asked me the other day about how Satan turned from good to evil. My 44 year old self, kind of wanted to say, "You know, I've wondered the same thing! And why is there so much evil in our world today if God is in control?" However, I figured that that might be a little too much for her. Who knows? Perhaps she would have had a good answer for me.
I am one who wants to know the answers to the questions. It is hard for me to respond to questions like Hannahs' in a way that outright shows that I have no answer. It is, in part, a desire to control something over which I have no control. Therefore, I do believe, lies my greatest pride; a desire to have answers where faith should be enough, leaves me feeling ill equipped.
Well, I am ill-equipped, as we all are, in the grandest of schemes, the scheme that belongs solely to the Lord. In reading James, he speaks of the warning signs against worldliness in chapter 4. Our worldliness is most evident in how we use our tongues. In chapter 3, James clearly chastises the believer saying about the tongue, "With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse the people who are made in the likeness of God (3:9)." We have been warned, yet we still fall into the same snare, thinking as if our tongue needn't be tamed.
How many times have I spent time in the word, devoting on how I should better live according to the example of Jesus only to, moments later, use my tongue in a way that is contrary to Jesus' model? "How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire (3:9b)!" If my tongue was a literal fire, there wouldn't be enough fire trucks in the world to squelch the flames that pour from my mouth.
Amidst my utter imperfection, I can only find solice in the perfection that is my Holy God. One of my favorite songs that is often sung during Lent is by Keith Getty. He writes in the fifth stanza:
Two wonders here that I confess
My worth and my unworthiness
My value fixed, my ransom paid
At the cross
It is only by that cross that the blunders that I make each moment of every day can be turned into something beautiful. Each time I allow my tongue to slip - and yes, it is an allowance - I am reminded of His power to forgive, His power to save.
In a sermon on the fourth chapter of James, Stuart Briscoe closes with this thought: "You see, my worth doesn't depend on the adulation of others; it is only God’s exaltation that counts. I can humble myself before others, I can be open and honest with them, and I can trust God with my reputation and all the circumstnaces of my life, because he has promised to raise me up one day." My worth is in Him. Nothing else. Praise be to God.
