I l
ove the recent weather and how the colorful leaves play against the most amazingly blue fall sky. I love the reds and golds that pop out just after a morning rain. Needless to say, that is why I loved my ‘sidewalk’ time on Saturday morning. The patches of partially evaporated rain on the concrete and the patches of quickly disappearing clouds, along with the briskness in the breeze made my trip around the course I normally take go rather quickly…not that I traveled it any quicker. You see, I am a shuffler. At my age,I’m doing well to maintain the ability to move my feet quickly enough to feign running. I don’t call myself a runner. I shuffle and I think about stuff. I pant and I pray.
I worked out some spiritual kinks this week in learning about the big words of ‘predestined, called, justified, and glorified.’ Like my exercising, I have to walk through some of the Scripture word-by-word for it to make sense. I understand there is a place of honor that was planned out before Adam was a gleam in God’s eye. God thought through his plans for man from beginning to end. He created people in His image to glorify him. That is my place of honor, and God gives me the choice to take it or leave it. It is God’s plan that was predestined in my way of thinking. He predestined to create man, knew we would mess it up, and predestined Christ to come clean up our mess. Then God gave us the open invitation to believe in His plan. Our part is to accept or turn down the invitation. This is a discussion that has divided people and churches, and has volumes upon volumes written on either side. It is a question that has come up for me in multiple settings in recent weeks, and begged clarification. Do you have those questions that just won’t leave you alone until you find a suitable answer for yourself?
My sister and mother used to love doing genealogy together. They took trips and spent hours in libraries, public document repositories and graveyards. Yet, one link in our family lineage appeared to be unresolvable. They were able to trace so far from ancestry prior to the ‘missing link,’ and they were able to trace backwards up to the ‘missing link.’ There were family member names and spouse names that popped out of the obituaries and whispered the solution, but it remained elusive. Determined not to leave this puzzle unsolved, my sister made one more effort in a county office basement somewhere in the state of Pennsylvania. Her efforts were grandly rewarded when she came across a court case that listed all family members involved in the case, and the missing link was documented. “That’s it!!!” she cried and counted the coup she so richly deserves. She discovered the link to our heritage.
My discovery in Scripture was sort of like that. “That’s it!” The link to my spiritual heritage and place of honor lies in God’s over-arching and eternal plan of salvation from Genesis to Revelation. It is the plan that He predestined and my participation in His plan is my prerogative. (See Ephesians 1:4-14 and Ephesians 3:10-11)