Silent Time

What kind of hierarchical structures dominate in your society?

In some cultures there are nowadays hardly any vertical hierarchies anymore, in others the situation is still similar to what it used to be in the past with different levels.

Take for example a hotel in the past, there used to be clear levels from the top manager down to the boy who had to clean the shoes and carry the bags.

Jesus, despite being the son of the most high God, yet he humbled himself to the lowest tasks, carrying the load on our behalf in order to serve us, in order to enable us for reconciliation with the holy God almighty, he took upon himself our burden of wrongdoing.

In many parts of human history there have been different kinds of pillars of scourging, where people got tortured. We may easily condemn the cruelties and those responsible. 

Jesus had to suffer terribly up to the cross. We may easily condemn the cruelty and those responsible, but let’s be careful, because the son of God took upon himself the suffering on our behalf, in order to offer us the opportunity to be reconciled with the holy Lord.

We all would like to receive great promises from God.

In fact they are available for everyone, the bible is full of such promises from God. The heavenly Father offers his love, help, forgiveness, hope, courage, strength and life in its fullness. All that and much more is available to everyone of any background, whoever humbly puts one’s trust in the Lord’s word.

What can we learn from those, to whom God originally gave those promises?

Help and encouragement amongst confusion and fear:

Whether we have navigated ourselves into troubling situations or whether it is imposed by others, among all kinds of confusion and fear, no matter how desparate, the Lord offers encouragement and help to everyone.

Do you receive his help?

What are your life’s circumstances?

Many people of our times have available more than enough food and other physical goods for the body in abundance.

How about the status of the nourishment for the soul and mind?

God loves to help all people and he offers his support to everyone of any background.

But many may argue “to me, he has never provided any help”.

So who receives his help?

It is a fantastic news: God opens the door to everyone of any background, no matter what someone has done or is going through.

The door is open and the Lord invites you.

Do you enter that gate? Do you accept the invitation?

We often may not notice it, yet boasting and wanting to be relatively better than others is deeply rooted in our human being, we all tend to be “puffed up”.

Did you ever have to treat mildew at the walls of your house or building?

Mildew may not only occur at walls and stones, it can also come up in all kinds of relationships between people, for example within the family.

As the mildew starts slowly but might gradually eat into the material and gradually damage it, so conflict and strife might start slowly but gradually might eat into relationships and create damage.

As it makes sense to radically remove the mildew including its root cause before it grows further and damages the walls or even destroys the building, so it makes sense to radically remove the dispute and strife including its root cause before it grows further and damages the relationship or even destroys lives.

As the mildew might have a deeper root cause such as moisture, so the conflicts and strife might have a deeper root cause such as bitterness in heart, un-forgiveness, thoughts of revenge, pride, etc.

Many people would like to have a more healthy lifestyle.

Some need to overcome their laziness.

Far more important than all those things is the fact that we cannot ultimately overcome sin and temptation by our own will-power rather we need to receive the grace of God that will help us also in that regard.

And then we can learn to overcome our own desires and rather follow the perfect guidance of the Lord who has a good long term plan for each of us individually. The heavenly Father had a plan and tasks for Elijah, who did the right thing to overcome listening to his own human logic alone and rather followed the guidance of God, resulting in major blessings. And God has a good plan and tasks for your life in the same way.