This evening I participated in a Shabbat.
I walked in the door of a stranger's home trailing behind friends of mine and was greeted with, "Shabbat Shalom". We gathered around a table, sang songs in Hebrew, praised the Lord. We shot some wine, broke some bread, and then ate together. The night ended with reading and discussion of Jacob and Esau (a passage I still find perplexing).
At sundown this evening began the Sabbath. Twenty-five hours of peace, shalom.
In a small part of our evening discussion a few of us pondered God's sovereignty and the fact the we just downright don't understand it. Now how could God favor Jacob over Esau, how could God harden the heart of Pharaoh but take Noah and his family to save and reap destruction on the rest of humanity? It makes my heart sad, and in the culture and world I live in, in the only way that my human mind knows how to try and understand God's sovereignty... I just don't get it.
I want to get it, I want to understand it. But do we need God if we understand it?
At this point a very wise woman stood up (not for dramatic effect, but because she needed to stretch her legs, but I like to pretend it was for dramatic effect) and exclaimed that one man she knew lost his home, his entire belongings, his life's work in the recent flood out here in Colorado, while her home was feet (literally feet) away from the river and was completely untouched. It should have been gone. "Does God love me more than He loves him?" She questioned and looked us deeply in the eyes, "No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not." But do we know why one house was destroyed, while the other should have been but wasn't? No. We don't. Every day she puts her key into the door and walks into her home she prays for that friend of her's that lost everything, and she thanks the Lord for His grace.
I don't know why God hardens hearts, and I don't know why he sends floods about the world. I don't know why he favored one brother over the other, and so and and so forth. But I can thank His glorious name for what I have been given in my own life. I can thank Him that He has not hardened my heart, and as I walk into the door of my home or open up my bible I can pray for those who have been hardened. I can take the gift of love that I have been given and spread it. I can ask God for mercy upon those people who's hearts are hard when they don't know how to ask for mercy themselves. Maybe part of why He does it is to bring us outside of ourselves.
If there is one thing about the character of God that I have learned in my short 25 years it is that God greatly loves to listen to the prayers of His people. But God is far outside any box we try to fit Him in. So why does He do it the way He does? I don't know. But I am grateful that I get to pray knowing that His ear tenderly listens.
Lord, I pray for the hearts of the ones you deeply love in this world that have been hardened to you, themselves, their loved ones, and all around them. I pray that you would place divinity and love in the lives of them that chisels away at the hard and the hurt to make them tender again in a beautiful way. I pray that you would place questions in the hearts of ALL of your people, believers and non-believers, and then provide them with truth in a way that speaks to each of them individually in a way that most romances them.
Thank You for life itself, and this Earth we live on.
Amen.
Shabbat Shalom.
