God’s Good News
I am usually the type of person who builds to a conclusion. I think that this is a result of my science training in inductive thinking. This year’s passage of scripture, however, entices me to work the other way around. The good news that I want to be sure to share is at the end of the passage, and I need to start with it. The good news is that although humans throughout history, including us, mess up, there are three things we can rely on,
God will never let us down,
God will never let us be pushed past our limit, and
God will always be there to help us get through the difficult times.
As we deal with the painful news of the world that surrounds us each day, that message is critically important to my/our health, both mentally and emotionally.
Now, let’s look back to the context in which this good news is set. The writer of 1 Corinthians, Paul, is writing to the church in Corinth. He starts with five warnings from the history of the Jewish people. Despite having been led through the wilderness by a fiery cloud, having been led through the Red Sea ahead of the Pharaoh and his soldiers, and having been fed manna and been provided with water in the wilderness, that wasn’t enough, and the people had turned against the wonderful gifts of God. Doesn’t that sound like us? Or, at least, it certainly sounds like me at times.
The Israelites engaged in activities that were not good for them, and those activities were not faithful responses to God’s goodness. As the Message describes it, “The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did- ‘First the people partied, then they threw a dance.’ We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them. (1 Corinthians 10: 6 – 10).” Those are easy traps for us to get caught in even today.
Going back to the biblical version that we use most often at University Hill, the New Revised Standard Version, Paul writes, “12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Sometimes I wonder about God not letting us be tested beyond our strength, especially in light of horrors like the Holocaust, but overall, what wonderful news we have in our fantastic Creator God as we face the difficulties of each day.
Supportive God, we ask you to walk with us as we stumble through our lives. We pray that you never let us down, that you never let us be pushed past our limit, and that you always be with us to help us get through the difficult times. We pray this in the name of Jesus, your Son, who died that we may be saved.
Barbara Fraser Tilley