Week 14 Day 5
Finding God in the Mysteries of every day
Genesis 3: 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
When comedian Steve Martin teamed up with Dan Ackroyd for their comedy bits on Saturday Night live one of his signature remarks was “Well, Excuse……Me!” The gospel group the Kingsmen sang a song that began; “Excuses, excuses, we hear them every day”. It seems that avoiding responsibility, or guilt, or accountability is something so deeply seated in the fabric of what we are as human beings that we can point to the very first examples of God’s created image of Himself. Adam blamed the woman, Eve blamed the serpent, but neither one acknowledged their own choice of disobedience, and so it goes down to this day.
When we come to Jesus and ask Him to be our Savior and King we are, in choosing Him, putting away every excuse, every self-justification, every pointing finger of blame that seeks to abrogate our own responsibility and put it off on someone or something else. But, sadly, this is not often the case. Far too many of us go on in our mode of self-justification without even considering what Jesus might have to say about our conduct.
When we acknowledge with our words only and do not combine words with action we are completely missing the whole point of the coming of Jesus into this world. Philippians 2 is often entitled the kenosis passage. The word means “emptying”. Jesus “emptied” himself of all glory privilege and power. He took the form of the most vulnerable, the least valued member of the Israelite culture. A bastard child of poverty he had little hope, few prospects, and virtually everything aligned against Him. Yet, He never once decried His birth. He never once bemoaned His position or used it as an excuse to avoid fully engaging His mission from His heavenly Father.
Larry M Lawrence- Mysteries 