Yesterday I had an opportunity to see how Bill and Mary Sweeney’s GoFundMe campaign was doing and I was delighted. I work part time and they changed my shifts so I’ve been off line a bit more as of late. The following scripture verse came to mind as I was pondering the loving kindness that has been extended to our brother and sister, Bill and Mary.
Of all people, Jesus, actually deflected the complement of being good, from Himself, to His Father and our Father. And it wasn’t that Jesus wasn’t good or without sin, because we know that He was and is, but our heavenly Father is indeed the source of all goodness. It was our Father’s intent to send His Son, the Messiah. It was our Father’s intent to make a way back to Himself possible. It was our Father’s intent to restore and make one again, that which had been broken, by allowing us to choose, with the free will He has given us.
We all see acts of kindness being extended to others every day, in a thousand different ways, via a kind word, a helping hand or the quiet service provided to others, extended via cleaning up or assisting others, not because we’re paid to do it, but just because we can. It used to be a much more prevalent part of our culture, it used to be much more visible that it is today. But, it is still there, in spite of all the terrible insensitivity towards others that we often see, in spite of the negativity of imagined superiority, in spite of our shortsightedness to our frailty and incompleteness and in spite of the double standard that we often hold, towards others and ourselves. For those of us within the family of believers, God’s working on those shortfalls within us.
Can you imagine living in a world without God’s goodness? Can we even begin to understand what a place this world would be, without the counterbalance to evil? So often we focus on that which we see that is not good, because the enemy wants us to be discouraged, disheartened, to lose hope, to forget who is really in charge. And yet, God still allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. The sun still continues to rise every morning, food still continues to grow, oxygen is still available in the air that we breath. He is patient, long suffering, waiting for us to turn back to Him. His patience is not infinite, it does not extend forever, the remaining time is getting shorter.
A lot of us recognize exceptional faith and courage when we see it. Enter Bill and Mary. The walk they have been called to walk leaves most of us in the dust. Both Bill and Mary have consistently displayed, over a considerable number of years, trust and faith in our God and He has blessed them and He has blessed us, through them. Oh, I know, there are many others who walk difficult paths, all of us have our own stories to tell, but on a scale of 1 to 10, all things considered, most of us don’t register all that high. And too often we ignore or don’t address deficiencies that we can and could do something about, to our shame and to our own discredit.
But during the last few days, as it applies to meeting some of the needs of Bill and Mary, the body of Christ has responded, the good that emulates from the Father has shined, in our hearts towards them and in their hearts towards us and it is good. And I am thankful for the goodness of the Father, from whom all blessings flow.
Praise be to our Father, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. We are blessed because of Him.
Deflecting praise to God, as you mentioned Jesus did at the beginning of this post, is a fantastic method to keep us humble. Giving credit to family, spouse, parents, co-workers, fellow believers, etc. helps to “build one another up” through grateful deflection of praise to God and others — which is part of the two greatest commandments. Thank you, Bruce….you just gave me a blog post idea!
Excellent, I’ll be watching for it!
Our God is a awesome God but he sometimes uses people to do his work.