Daily Delight
When I was a kid, Sunday mornings meant waking up early to sit in a brick building and color on the back of the pamphlet they handed out. I was physically present, but mentally—I never exuded the mental energy to try to comprehend the sermon we heard week to week. I don’t know if I would have really gotten it back then. I was a child, growing up, a little bored but mostly complacent to be sitting on a church pew coloring a paper bulletin. Growing up, this intrinsic satisfaction that left me feeling spiritually stagnant, is something that I don’t want to experience again.
We’ve heard it before again and again but the truth of John 3:16 still rings true: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (NIV). I implore you to go and give it a fresh look and deliberate on its truth even if it’s the fourth or four hundredth time you’ve read it. Still, I struggle to comprehend the thought of giving up a child (especially in this way) and I’m not even a parent.
I have no kids, but I can firmly tell you that I wouldn’t of done it; not for love, not for you or for myself, no. The God that we see in John 3:16 is not the kind of God that you sit on a church pew and tune out; He is the kind of God that causes your chest to get heavy and tears to well up in the corners of your eyes and hands to go thrown up during worship and mission groups to travel the world to tell people about Jesus. He isn’t a God you sit complacently alongside. I heard at church the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14). I realized that a lot of times I am like the Pharisee, doing some sort of grandstanding before God. I don’t want to be the Pharisee, satisfied so easily; I want to be the tax collector, who can’t even lift his head towards heaven but ardently pleads “be merciful to me, a sinner!” That is a man that is not complacent in his own right; that is a man that understands the immensity of Jesus.
{photo: @fromevelynsheart}
About the Author
Samantha Brooks
≫ ≫ Samantha is a native North Carolinian studying Communications-PR. She loves coffee, people, and the joy that worship brings. In her free time, Samantha loves to write and paint. Her very favorite bible verse is Psalm 139:14: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
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