What words do you use that imply something about God that really came from the ungodly traits of the humans in your life? This is what we’ll look at now because it can make all the difference between a safe, healthy friendship with Abba-Father and a relationship that’s handicapped by misconceptions.

Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, / Now I will arise,” says the LORD; “I will set him in the safety for which he longs.” / The words of the LORD are pure words; / As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times. (Psalm 12:5-6 NASB)

The Christmas of my first bicycle was both delightful and frustrating. Delightful because I finally received what I’d been begging for. Frustrating because my younger sister got a bike too.

Whenever I had pleaded, “Please can I have a bicycle,” my parents told me that I wasn’t old enough. So you can imagine how I felt when my sister got her bike the same day I did, even though she was two years younger than me.

“Unfair!” I cried.

I can empathize with the first laborers in Jesus’ parable about the vineyard workers (Matthew 20:1-16). The landowner hired them early in the morning and agreed to pay them a denarius (the usual wage for a day’s work). He hired more workers at noon, still more at mid-afternoon, and a few more just one hour before quitting time. Then the landowner, a.k.a. God, paid everyone the same amount. In relating this to my bicycle, I had “worked” longer than my sister at growing old enough for a bike.

“Unfair!” cried the men who had worked the longest. “Some of those other guys worked only one hour and paid them the same amount you gave to us. That’s not fair!”

But the employer replied, “I am not being unfair to you, friend.” (Friend? Is this how God treats his friends? As Saint Teresa of Jesus said, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them.”)

 


Day 4 on the journey includes:

  1. Turn off the auto-responses that control your feelings
  2. Rout out your misconceptions about Abba-Father
  3. Reprogram your thought processes
  4. Watch your words

 

© 2021 by Terry A. Modica

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