Monday, November 3, 2014

Everything we do

Everything we do, as humans, from the shabbiest act to the most illustrious, is tainted by sin, from the most selfish to the most selfless. Why? Because sin is the primary fact of life of the human race of which all partake. That’s why we call it ‘the sin of Adam.’ Adam is ‘humanity.’

This sin has many symptoms, but the most ready to the thinking mind is instability. We are not even speaking of ethics and morals, just everyday behavior, thoughts, feelings and the resultant actions. Everything about us is unstable. We find ourselves bailing out sinking ships.

This is where the ‘God who is’ plausibly comes in. His presence within us, if we are Christians, convicts us of sin, but He doesn’t stop there. He works with us, if we let Him. He mixes into that maelstrom of our consciousness His thoughts, His feelings, even His actions. Yet, not only for us.

He does this for all human beings without exception, because He is the ‘only Lover of mankind.’ The only difference is, the non-Christian may not have any idea what is going on. But we find this is true. Everyone is sinful, unstable, is struggling for good as far as they know it.

Everyone fails, yet we keep trying. Everything we do, as humans, from the shabbiest act to the most illustrious, is touched by grace, from the most selfish to the most selfless. Why? Because the ‘God who loves us’ works within and through us in spite of ourselves in inevitable synergy.

It’s always a case of ‘will we let Him,’ again, even for the non-Christian, even for the atheist. God is no respecter of persons. He is shameless as He walks into our hearts when we leave the door open even just a crack, to do for us and in us that good He made us for, even if we don’t know Him.

Because it isn’t that we know Him, but that He knows us. And it isn’t that we can do anything good alone but that He doesn’t do anything without our cooperation, even though it may be an internal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ God sees through our every defense, knows even what we do not know about ourselves.

He never forces the door, and He made us with a door that can be closed, but it was open on our first day. He knows why we don’t open it widely in welcoming Him, be it we are too tired, too sorrowful, too angry, too defeated, too ignorant, too lazy. He is always ready to help, though our hearts be numb.

He hears our voice calling from where we ourselves cannot hear it, and He answers. He sees our stumbling, and He comes to support us, to set our feet on the right path, and our thoughts, feelings and actions, while we wait are woven with His in our day to day lives, transforming us and the world.

Little by little, the synergy that is our inescapable condition as much as is our sinfulness, brings us out of failure to victory, out of sickness to health, for that is another thing that sin is—sickness. And He does this for all of humanity, not just for Christians, but for all. He is the ‘only Lover of mankind.’

And this world He gave us is the only one there is.

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