You Are a Gift

 

If God is love, why does God allow injustice and wickedness in the world? i.e.  Why did he let your parents get divorced and your father hit you every time he came home drunk?  Why does your boss work you like a slave? Why are there innocent women and children in Africa starving to death, driven away from their homes and livelihood by inhumane insurgents? The list of questions can go on and on and on as there are news of injustice and wickedness every day.  Some of it you see with your own eyes and at times you may even be the victim.

So, is God really love?

Have you ever given someone you love a very expensive and complex gift that they did not treasure? It may be that as soon as you gave it, it was set aside and forgotten.  If not forgotten, perhaps the instruction manual was not read before using it, so it was destroyed after a couple of  attempts to use it.  Worse yet is if they knew how to use it, but tried to take shortcuts and ruined the gift in the process.

A better illustration might be this: A father gives his son a goldfish along with written instructions on how to take care of it.  There are at least four things that the son can do in response.  First, the ideal response: read the instructions and faithfully feed the fish and clean the aquarium at the proper time as well as enjoy having a pet fish.  Second: read the instructions, but take care of the fish the way he thinks he should. Third: not read the instructions and take care of the fish the way he thinks he should.  Fourth and final: ignore the instructions and ignore the fish until it dies or, worse, torture the fish until it dies.

You are a gift formed by God in your mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5), a gift first given to your parents.  As a loving God, He has made available to them their conscience, the Bible and His Spirit for their guidance and instruction on how to raise and treat you.  As to whether they would follow His instructions or their own mind and whim, He, out of His love, gave them the freedom of choice.  As you get older, you become a gift shared by
more and more people.  You are a gift to your boss, the people around you and to yourself.  Yes, you are a gift even to yourself.  Again, each one, including you, is given the choice to either follow the godly way or his or her own way.

In Jeremiah 22, God has Jeremiah speak to the king of Judah, his servants and his people who enter his gates the following:

³Thus says the Lord, “Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor.                   Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

⁴”For if you men will indeed perform this thing, then kings will enter the gates of this house, sitting in David’s place on his throne,          riding in chariots and on horses, even the king himself and his servants and his people.

⁵”But if you will not obey these words, I swear by Myself,” declares the LORD, “that this house will become a desolation.”

He gave him instructions on how to take care of the people he was ruler over, as well as the choice on whether to follow them or not.  The consequence depended on the choice.  God does provide justice in one way or another, in ways we might not even know.

The main point that I am trying to convey is that God has given us to one another as gifts.  It is up to us to treat each other like He designed for us to or to be hard-headed and treat each one however we like.  In our sinful nature, we would opt to do the second, which is destructive and selfish, thus, the injustice and wickedness in this world.  Even our most selfless act can be underlined by the most selfish motive.

Is there any hope then for us to get any better? Sure! God did not only provide His Son Jesus to pay the penalty of our sins and deliver us from eternal death.  He also saved us so that we can love others the way He loved us and treat them as we ought.  The cure to injustice starts with
you and me repenting of our sins and believing in Jesus, then allowing His Holy Spirit to heal and recreate us into being the gift God’s created us to be to others.  Finally, as we listen to His instructions, we need to treat others like the precious gifts that they are.