October 5 thru October 11, 2009

Note: I love devotional thoughts about God’s goodness and help, but we also need to spend time reflecting on the lessons for living that He has given us. This week’s meditations deal with seven such lessons. When we honestly attempt to follow those teachings (with his help) we can truly live everyday with confidence!

Day One, Luke 16:10; Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. A woman who was passed over for a promotion said to me, “I am the most qualified for that position both educationally and in terms of experience. It’s just unfair!” Since I had some knowledge of the person who made the decision not to promote her, I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me, so I asked, “What’s unfair about the decision besides your education and experience, was it a gender thing?” She assured me it wasn’t. “Then, was it the criteria that Bill (not his real name) used in deciding who was promoted?” “That’s it” she replied, “He said the reason I didn’t get the job was because I had a habit of taking an extra half hour for lunch and that I delegated too much of my work to the temps in the office. It’s just unfair!” Rightly or wrongly we are often judged in the workplace, school and even the church by the little things, not the big things we do or don’t do. Could it not be said that the same holds true when it comes to our spiritual lives?

Day Two, October 4, Luke 16:15b; You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. When we think about “justifying” ourselves we usually think about those times when we’ve been caught and tried to make it sound like we weren’t really in error. But today’s passage goes beyond that simple definition. It goes to the real reason we do things. Dale Carnegie once said that in most instances people have two reasons for the things they do, the real one and the one that sounds good. I’m sure we’ve all known people who justify their greed by appearing to be charitable, or who can spout scripture verses (usually out of context) to justify their prejudices. Several years ago, I knew a unscrupulous businessman who was the pillar of his church (fundamentalist, not liberal) and was looked up to by many because he continually made statements like, “See this diamond ring (or my new Lexus, etc), God gave it to me.” We need to not only be aware of the things we do, but the reasons we are doing them. God looks beyond our “reasons that sound (or look) good” and sees our inner motivation, what Carnegie called “the real reason”.

Day Three, Luke 17:1; Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! The King James Version uses the word “offences” for “Occasions for stumbling”. Neither the NRSV or KJV words really convey the meaning of the Greek text, which speaks of a trap that is deliberately set to ensnare or cause a scandal. What is more important than quibbling over language is that we understand the point of Jesus’ words. Jesus is using a negative to underline an important precept in not only spiritual growth and maturity but also basic human relations. We need to be careful about deliberately “setting traps” for other people in order to make them look bad or cause them to stumble. Most of us would condemn a person who placed a drink of whiskey in the hands of a reformed alcoholic, but how many of us have used the personality weaknesses of others to advance our own career or agenda? As children of God, we need to seek ways to build other people up, not find ways to tear them down. Yes, life can be competitive, but we should seek ways to compete fairly in the arena of ideas and business.

Day Four, Luke 3a; Be on your guard! Remember the old spiritual that says, “Not my mother, not my brother but it’s me O Lord…?” In 1998 I suffered a dissecting thoracic aortic aneurysm, which necessitate my being life flighted from Tulsa to Houston’s Methodist Hospital. I was in the hospital for almost a month. The day I was to be released, one of the nurses suggested that I might need a shower. (Until the last week someone had come in and given me those famous hospital sponge baths). For some reason, the word hadn’t got to me that I was supposed to start bathing myself. As I took my shower, I began to understand why visitors had been standing as far away from me as possible during the past week! So it is with our lives, we can become so accustomed to ourselves and our way of doing things that we don’t really realize we “don’t smell like a rose.” Since nine-five percent of what we do and the way we interact with and treat others is habit, Jesus advises that we need to step back and in the words used by the King James in today’s text “Take heed to (y)ourselves!”

Day Five, Luke 17:3b; If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. All right! This is what most of us are really good at isn’t it? We can spot a “sinning” brother a mile away, and this verse gives us the hunting license we’ve been waiting for! Or does it? There are two little words that take away the hunting license. The first one is the word “sins” (trespass in the KJV). In the Greek text the word is “hamartanō”, meaning “to miss the mark”. This is a generic term we translate “sin”. We often loose sight of the fact that people can miss the mark through carelessness, as well as intentionally. The other word in the text is “rebuke”, which in the Greek means to “censure, admonish or forbid”. In other words, before we load up our hunting rifle, we need to first determine the severity of the “sin” against us. Was it an intentional, thought out scheme to cause us to stumble? Or was it something that was said or done carelessly, without thinking? Since the verse makes it clear that the purpose of the “rebuke” is to bring about repentance, our response should be more in the form of an admonishment than a harsh censure (which would alienate the person). When we take time to step back and consider the situation before speaking or acting, we avoid the regret that can come from acting in the heat of the moment.

Day Six, October 8, Luke 17:4; And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent,” you must forgive. This verse sheds more light on the previous lesson, because it is obvious that the missing of the mark here has to do with carelessness rather than intentional actions. The linguist that I checked indicated the word repent (as used here) referred to a person’s action after they perceived they had done something offensive. In both lessons, we are told that our response to their “repentance” must be to forgive. The Greek word translated “forgive” is “aphesis”, meaning to release from deserved penalty. It has nothing to do with “forgetting”, rather it means that we are willing to give up any claim we have for either retribution or revenge. When we “release” our claims against others we free our minds of the bitterness that clouds our thinking and hinders peace of mind.

Day Seven, Luke 17:5; The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
We all know that it runs against the grain of our culture to seek to live by the teachings of the verses we’ve been reflecting on. It runs contrary to the way we’ve become accustomed to behaving. But that is the way to constant inner peace and confident living according to Jesus. Faced with being told that they should learn to live by a different code than most people live by, the apostles response was that they didn’t think they could do it! They realized, like we do that this was the better way to live, but they just didn’t believe they had it in them, so they cried, “Increase our faith.” Jesus response is interesting. He tells them that if they have just a little faith (the faith they already had), they could do it, if they exercised it. God never ask us to do the impossible—he knows we already have the capability—we must simply apply our will to doing living as he wants us to.