January 29, 2024
Psalm 35:1-10 // Numbers 22:1-21 // Acts 21:17-26
But let me run loose and free,
celebrating GOD’s great work,
Every bone in my body laughing, singing, “GOD,
there’s no one like you.
You put the down-and-out on their feet
and protect the unprotected from bullies!”
This morning as I was processing these passages it struck me that what I want is so often very shallow, very lame, and so much less than what God would have for me.
The stories told in Numbers and Acts each in their own ways point to the reality that there is more to what God is doing than what I often see. I get focused on immediate circumstances so easily. I lose the forest for the trees.
God, typically, has something so much more for me than what I think I want in the immediate moment.
I am reminded of the C.S. Lewis quote, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses.
Oh that I would pursue the infinite joy that is offered me!
And yet, where is that infinite joy put on display? It is put on display when when God puts the “down-and-out on their feet and protect(s) the unprotected from bullies!”
This is where I will find the infinite joy! When I get involved with what God is doing in the world then I will move beyond my weak and desires to those things that are much stronger.
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