God in a Food Trough

God—omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. God Almighty. El Shaddai. Just trying to think about him can blow your mind. But to think that God, who is by definition limitless, would choose to take on the greatest limits that we know, can certainly trip all your circuits.

And yet, that is the message of the New Testament. Who would have ever thought this up? Certainly it wouldn’t be the logical conclusion of Judaism—the religion of God, the exalted and high and holy one.

Wanting Life My Way

My wife’s favorite movie, Lost in Yonkers, is one most people didn’t get that excited about. (She just has better taste than most!) The main character, played by Mercedes Rule, is Bella, a woman in her mid-thirties living in New York in the 1940s. Bella has a very childlike personality and is a bit on the slow side. After meeting a guy who wants to marry her, she decides to get her family (mother, aunt, brother and nephews) together to announce the big news.

Enjoy Others

 Last week I spoke to you about remembering to enjoy God, taking seriously David’s call for us to delight ourselves in the Lord.

In writing to Timothy, Paul said something else we need to hear. In the midst of a challenge to those who have wealth, he spoke of putting our hope in God “who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

If we think sometimes that God’s real intention is that we live with a kind of grit-your-teeth, gut-it-out kind of endurance, we need to let Paul’s words change our minds. We live in relationship with a God who “provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”