II Samuel 2:26 Abner called out to Joab, "Must the sword devour forever? Don't you realize that this will end in bitterness? How long before you order your own men to stop pursuing their brothers?"
"When the battle is against brothers instead of error, the time to stop is now." I have thought a lot about these few words, and all that they imply. A battle against brothers - God calls us to love our brothers; how this must grieve Him when we battle or speak against our brothers. Truly our flesh is weak that we so often find ourselves identifying with a man or a group instead of identifying with God.
And the error thing, I wonder what kind of error matters most to God, what kind He thinks is sufficently important to make a big issue over. Would He make as big a deal as we do about mode of baptism or communion or style of dress or even eschatology as we do? Would He be as concerned about labels like Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian as we are, or would He be more concerned with relationship - with Him and with each other? I keep hearing those two commandments ring in my mind: Love me and Love one another.
And how happy do we make Him by all the time we spend criticizing and talking against those who are in a "camp" that differs from our own? Time and energy that could be spent far more productively, and that would truly glorify Him.
I Chronicles 13:9-10 When they came to the threshing floor of Kidon, Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he had put his hand on the ark. So he died there before God.
I confess that I really struggled with this one: Uzzah only meant well, after all. But, no action is isolated. Everything we do or say has ripple effects, and his touch was only a ripple effect of an earlier disobedience. God said the ark should be carried on the shoulders of the Levites. It was not being carried on the Levites, so it balanced precariously, and Uzzah paid the consequences.
We see a good person hurt and question God about how He could allow that, but that is not the issue. The issue is what led up to that hurt - illness, accident, infidelity, or lost job? The unfairness of this moment had its roots, not in God's unfaithfulness, but as a consequence of sin in this world. And we have no idea of how great those consequences are, how deeply they infiltrate all of life.
God's desire for us is to rejoice, to bear the fruit of an intimate relationship with the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance....a clear path to the life we want. So maybe the lesson here is not about the unfairness of God toward us, but of our unfairness toward God, blaming Him for allowing us to reap the consequences of our own (as humanity) choices.
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