Good Wednesday morning! We have 3 nice days coming up in the weather forecast. At least the forecast high temps look pretty nice, the little windows do not contain a lot of detail. Looking around our neighborhood, I thought of a similar thing. We live in a pretty nice place. No mansions, but nice homes that are well above the standard in most of the world. Out front are nice lawns with a bit of landscaping; some lawns have more and some less, especially the one that has finally made an effort at catching up after living in the neighborhood for more than ten years now, but we don't need to go in to that little detail right now. If you look past the nice lawns to the streets and driveways, you will find a few campers, a few boats, and quite a few cars and pickups; again, some have more and some less, but overall a fairly normal selection of vehicles for a neighborhood of this type.
Coming from the houses you will not hear loud arguments and only the occasional cry of a child or two. With most homes in our two little blocks of the street having two paying jobs, some earning more and some less, the financial issues are not like those you would find in a rundown apartment block or a "projects" housing in a city. Many of the families are also relatively young and have but one or two children. Out front in the mostly well-kept lawns you would find the normal conversation and the normal questions. Things out front seem pretty good here in the heartland. But this morning, I thought about the real heart land, the one that matters when we stand before God at the judgment. Are things still pretty good if you and I could see what God sees on this little street where I live?
Right, we can't see and so we do not know. We could go into comparisons of how much Person X lives on per year in this country over there, and how much Person Z lives on in this country over yonder, but that doesn't tell the story that only God can read in the heart of Person Y on this little street. In the world, some people might have cause for envy at our apparent lifestyle, while some others would have cause to look down the nose at our homes and yards. That isn't the standard we will be judged against though. That would be too easy.
Can you imagine the competition that would take place if each person had to have one house of a minimum size, a nice yard out front, and a certain minimum in cash and possessions to get into Heaven? Actually, if you look around at the world from a distance you might think that is exactly the standard God set down in his word. If that's the case, my neighbors to the west are winning; I hope they will give me a good reference when they meet God. You see, even in writing about this disease of stuff and money we seem to have, I find myself comparing neighbors. In a way you might say that I have dropped out of the race, but I still have those human eyes made of flesh that want to look around me. If I moved to a so-called rundown neighborhood the disease would not let go of me, for the flesh is a part of me and would move with me. What I must do is learn to look in another direction and at another standard.
In God's word we find the standard he set down for us to compare our actions and thoughts against. The Law has all the thou-shalt-not's that anyone could want in a difficult standard. Jesus summarized the standard when he told his followers to be perfect even as their heavenly Father is perfect. So instead of looking around me at the world, I have to look at an impossible standard? I'm screwed.
Exactly, not one of us can keep up with the world's standards of wealth and accomplishments for there is always something more to add to our life's resume. Not one of us can meet God's standard because all of us were born into a sinful state. There must be another way. A way they looked forward to from Adam's fall to the last words of Malachi; from the promise made to John the Baptist's parents to the final benediction of John the Apostle after the Revelation of Christ. A way that doesn't require us meeting a standard that none can meet or keep up with. A way that stood before his disciples and said, "I am the Way..." Hey, that makes it kind of obvious, no?
Enjoy the day! We have a choice before us: get ahead of the Joneses of the world and hope God will use that standard, meet God's perfect standard set down in the Law, or believe in Christ and take hold of the promise of John 3:16 and 14:6.
Bucky
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