No one likes to feel they’ve received the short end of the stick. Shafted. Bamboozled. Left out in the cold. We all know what it means. It’s our due, and it hasn’t come to us like it should.
It’s simply not fair.
How is it that a young mother in Texas, barely into her 30s, with two small children, scrimps and saves with her husband to move into a brand new home, only to receive the news within months that cancer is eating her from the inside out? Before a year is up, she’s gone, unable to enjoy what should have been hers.
It wasn’t fair, for her, her husband, or for her children. Where were the promises of God when that happened?
1 Corinthians 9:9 tells us:
“For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned?”
Pull out a set of commentaries on this verse, and the writers will give varying opinions on what it means. However, the consistency we’ll notice in their responses is that the verse isn’t about the oxen. Rather it’s about how much God loves us.
Imagine this scenario: We live an affluent lifestyle and can afford just about anything. Our son turns sixteen and pleads for a new truck. Everyone else at his school already has one, he cajoles.
Do we give it just because we can, or do we look at the larger picture? He ran his mini-bike into the ground, let a friend wreck his four-wheeler, and now he wants a truck? Or maybe it’s simpler. We know he’ll only appreciate what he’s had to earn. We understand why we say no, but he feels like it’s his due, and we’re leaving him out in the cold.
We don’t get our feelings hurt. We listen to his complaints, tell him we love him, and move on to the next crisis. We know he’ll be a better man for learning the lessons that go along with life.
What doesn’t happen is that he gets everything he wants.
How is God any different? We call him our heavenly Father, and the scriptures tell us we are his children. When we ask from him, and we expect him to jump, is it possible he sees a bigger picture, tells us he loves us, and moves on to the next crisis?
It’s what we do with our children. If we don’t, they become spoiled brats who don’t respect us and turn out greedy and self-centered.
Life isn’t about us. It’s about God’s love for our fellow man. It’s about us growing and maturing in Christ, especially when life doesn’t give us sweet-smelling roses and gentle breezes. We’ll become better examples to the world when we strive to become more like him.
God loves us, and that means he doesn’t give us everything we want.
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Code: FGO.D.15.15.vp.esv