Today was actually nearly two days long. We got up on Friday, November 21 and are going to bed on Friday, November 21, but we have seen two sunrises and two sunsets. We crossed the International Date Line sometime during all of that. The only thing we didn’t do was eat six meals or sleep sixteen hours. We both feel swacked.
The trip to the airport in Seoul was in daylight so we were able to see the massive construction projects in all directions, including foundations poured for many new apartments, and a long bridge across part of the ocean. Its span has not quite met in the middle, making an unsettling impression with the gap perhaps two car lengths wide.
This and today’s devotional passage made me think about creativity. For instance, every created thing is subject to whoever created it. When I make a quilt, its design follows my ideas and skill. It never takes off with a mind of its own and changes its color or pattern. I might blame my mistakes on it doing just that, but have to admit that is not possible. The quilt does what I make it do.
Yet there is one created piece of art that turns itself away from the One who made it — human beings. The Bible says, “We have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6) and ignored or rejected the Creator who made us. Even if that verse did not exist, I would know the truth of it from experience. Instead of doing what God created me to do (love and obey Him), I resist and try to do my own thing.
Some explain this curiosity by saying we are created with a will and can make choices. I wonder. Scripture says we serve either sin or God. We are not the masters of our choices, at least the Bible seems to say that I really never have my own way. Whatever I decide to do, it will either line up with one master or the other. If God is not ruling my life, then sin is, and certainly not me.
Luke 1:74-75 says that God swore an oath to Abraham that He would “grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.”
These verses are spoken by the father of John the Baptist. He is speaking about the salvation that would come from the house of David (verse 69), meaning Jesus, not John, because John’s parents were Levites.
These verses mark the key to serving God as being “delivered from the hand of our enemies.” The Jews expected this to be their physical enemies so when Jesus didn’t deliver them from the Romans, they were more than disappointed.
However, they misread the text. Jesus didn’t come to lead a political coup. He came to “seek and save the lost” and deliver humanity from the power of sin, rescuing us from turning our own way instead of loving and following God.
He also came to deliver us from the bondage of Satan and his lies. Our enemy is spiritual and coaxes us to continue doing what we think is our own thing. However, if I was not delivered from that sin and that expression of self-centeredness, I could not serve God. Luke says so.
Luke also hints that fear holds us back. We are afraid of what God will do to us, just like Eve in the garden before she and Adam committed that first sin. They were afraid of what they might miss if they didn’t eat from that tree.
Sometimes I wish my unfinished quilts were like me. If they were, when I come home from vacation I’d find that they had sewn themselves together, saving me the time and effort.
On the other hand, maybe it would turn out more like I do when I refuse to let my Creator govern what I do. Then the quilts would be in ruin because they went ahead without someone wiser in charge of their construction.
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