Wednesday, May 4, 2011

May 1 The Compassion of Human Frailty

Psalm 103:13-14 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers we are dust.
What a beautiful thought: my heavenly Father has compassion on my in the same way that an earthly father would on his own small child. The earthly father knows that child is fragile, so he adjusts his expectations. In the same way, my heavenly Father does not hold me to standards of perfection because He knows that I am made of dust; in Paul's words, I am handicapped by this sin which dwells in my flesh.
As I meditate on this passage, I find great comfort in the compassion of God, His gentle love restraining the harsh judgment our sin might deserve. Then I think about that phrase, "those who fear Him."

Fear: yare: fearing, reverent, afraid. As I reflect on that, I think about how too many people do not fear God, not because He is diminished when we talk about Him as a God of love, but because of how diminished He is by the box we put Him in. We put God in a box, like a child's toy, to be pulled out when we need Him, when we have gotten ourselves into trouble, or we are experiencing too much pain. Then we call on God for help.the Hebrew word.



I am grateful to be confident in the love of God, to be forgiven, but I also know that God does allow people to harden their hearts, and that my friend is a fearful thing, to rouse God's wrath and grief so that He would allow us to so harden our hearts that we no longer hear Him.

So, today I thank God for His compassion, I find great comfort in it, but I also pray that I will never drift away from Him into the land of hard hearts.

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