Getting my thoughts together is proving harder than I thought. I'm still not sure this says all I wanted to or says it the way I wanted. It's just some things I've been thinking about recently. There's much more of this going on in my head, but this is the gist of it that I managed to get "on paper".
From things going on in the world I’ve been wondering about finding balance between the need to feel safe and trusting God. Basically the idea is this: when we do not trust in God we try too hard to make ourselves safe. To me it seems like people are going too far in trying to preserve their lives.
That is not to deny the need to take reasonable precautions. However, it is to realize that even with those precautions we have no guarantee of safety. Therefore, it is necessary to trust God with our lives; that whether we are comfortable or suffering it is not apart from God. Because if being safe is the desire of our hearts, when life takes that safety away we are lost, we blame God, we fear life.
Ultimately perhaps fear is the key. If safety is our goal we will spend our lives trying to do anything to keep ourselves safe, fearing that something will hurt us. If trust in God is our goal we don’t have to fear anything because we believe He has control over what is going on, good or bad.
This has always been a source of tension. We need to trust, but do so wisely.
ReplyDeleteIt's somewhat sad to say, but what brought this to mind is legislation being passed about texting while driving. While I agree doing that is a very bad idea, I just wondered where they are going to stop with legislation. We cannot make laws to prevent everything; people must take responsibility for their actions and exercise some common sense. When it comes to distracted driving, I could write a list of things that distract me but which would be ridiculous to try and hem in with laws. How do we know when we are going to far in trying to stay safe?
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