Jeremiah 7:18-28
from January 10, 2006
When I was a youngster, I had virtually no athletic skills whatsoever. (Sadly, that was a harbinger of the rest of my life, though I have enjoyed playing softball and volleyball as an adult.) As a result of my inadequacy, I devised pastimes which I could engage by myself.
One of the simplest of these was throwing a large ball, or sometimes a tennis ball, up onto the roof of our house, catching it, and throwing it back as many times as I could without letting it drop to the ground. I was young enough that I couldn’t see the ball until it was almost over the horizon of the roof so the more I had to rush, the more scrambling I had to do and it was a pretty good aerobic workout before anyone ever knew what “aerobic” meant.
One thing I never saw happen was the ball coming to rest upon the peak of the roof. It was always rolling toward me or away from me, on those occasions when I would throw it a little too hard and it would go into the backyard.
Note verses 23 and 24: “…‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward.”
Like that ball, we cannot rest upon a spiritually neutral perch. Life is full of ups and downs and trying to be in Neutral means we will be rolling downhill one way or the other, forward or backward. We are moving closer to God or away from Him, either hurriedly or incrementally, but we are moving.
The critical question is not so much one of movement, but of direction.
Which way are you pointing today?
2 Comments:
At May 05, 2006 1:30 AM, Rossi said…
Pointed in the true north direction, as best i can anyway
At May 31, 2006 6:24 PM, Shannon said…
At Grandma's house on Wednesdays, I always check to see if you have a new blog or not. One week, I saw this one and I read it. It really caught me by surprise as I realized that I was becoming like that ball that you would occasionally throw too hard. I was straying away from God in the way of forgetting to do my Quiet Time each day, and when I would do it, I wouldn't read the passage, I would just read the "Digging Deeper" section and write about that. This blog really opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong, and how I needed to change. Now, the recent weeks in my Quiet Time have no blank spots. It feels awesome to know that I am close to God again. Thanks Dad!
No comments:
Post a Comment