The Gospel of John is one of my favorite Gospels. The interaction between Jesus and the people around Him is so rich with context regarding humanity. Jesus is God and He knows us, and knows everything. He is the Alpha and the Omega and nothing at all is hidden from Him. One famous example is the understanding Jesus has that Peter will deny Him three times and telling Peter so after Peter declares emphatically that he would lay down his life for Jesus. Peter thought one way about himself, Jesus knew another.
Humans think they know, but as we see in 1 Corinthians 8:2, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” Why? Because we don’t know the future and we assess the past with a darkened understanding because we are human and subject to prejudice, ignorance, and emotions. Even though the coming of the Messiah was prophesied for hundreds of years ahead of Jesus’s arrival and ministry, the very people that this promise was given to missed the arrival. Why?
I believe that human beings fundamentally want to know and control. To know and control is a basic concept for life plans, to a certain extent. And for a non-Christian that would be OK without a governor as that person answers to humans only. But as Christians we have a God that we do answer to and we are to be in the process of following Him. And that following involves denying ourselves. This denial includes many times, giving up the control of knowing and control.
Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, from what I have read, seemed a gentle, godly man. Yet in his considerations of what to do with Mary when he discovered that she was pregnant, he was visited in a dream by an angel and given the instructions of what to do regarding her, and in his considerations of divorcing Mary privately, he obeyed the angel’s instruction in the dream and took Mary to be his wife. Joseph had an obedient heart. Joseph relinquished control. And Joseph had to have been willing to relinquish some “knowing”.
There is a much-known statement that Jesus makes to His disciples in Luke 9:62 regarding a person not being fit for the Kingdom of God if they put their hand to the plow and looks back. The kingdom of God exists for us in moments, not as an accumulation of the past, nor in a certain understanding of the future. To look back is to judge where you have been in pride or in shame. Neither is that looking a defining characteristic of ourselves. Our view forward is limited and is day by day.
Ok, so why write all this? I write this because it troubles me that in our current political climate in the United States, there are so many in the Christian Community that believe whole heartedly that God has won with the election of Donald Trump as our 47th President. Perhaps. And perhaps it’s just another steppingstone to the return of Christ and the prophesies in Revelation coming to pass. I am certainly glad that a political party was defeated so soundly that believes and works to force to fruition the murdering of babies and the ungodly confusion of gender and marriages. I get that this defeat is a good thing. But I am very wary of the open acceptance of Elon Musk and what he and his amazing successes and his Grok bring to the table. And I think it is naïve and shortsighted for Christians to become so pleased with the success of this last election that they stop following Jesus individually and listening very carefully to Him, thereby following down a wrong path. Beware of this. We are one more day closer to the end.
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