For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil (1 Peter 3:12). After almost 2 years of COVID and everything that has resulted, many of us - most of his - have deep concerns about our country, our way of life, and our future.
Where is all of this headed??
Will hostile viruses continue to be a common threat to our everyday lives??
Is government over-reach a trend of what is ahead? Is its objective the protection of citizens or the accumulation of power?
Is this a political tipping point that we’ll ruefully look back on as a significant juncture in a downward spiral??
And what about the curtailing of personal rights and all that that has entailed for the last 2 years: masks, restrictions, vaccines, and protests??
Many of us, if pressed to be self-analytical, would have to admit that all things COVID have devoured exorbitant amounts of our time – consuming news and social media commentary, talking and arguing and thinking about what it all means, only to wake up the next day and start all over again.
Is it any wonder that COVID-fatigue has taken hold??
So here’s the question every Christ-follower needs to address in 2022: am I concerned
primarily about my spiritual life and health? Do I treasure Christ
above all?
When I stand before God I won’t give an account for government decisions or the position of the medical community of which I can do very little to influence.
But, I will give an account for me.
Did I pursue His kingdom and His righteousness above all – even now?
Did I store up for myself treasures in heaven?
Did I work by the Holy Spirit’s power to align my life with His Word?
Did I spend more time thinking about the concerns of eternity than the temporal issues of the day??
Has my life clearly exhibited love, peace, and joy?
The Bible verse at the top of the page is a quote by Peter taken from Psalm 34. In it, the psalmist David speaks of the eyes, ears and face of God – One who is immaterial and non-physical, neither possessing a body or having component parts.
But David was describing – symbolically using physical human characteristics or
anthropomorphisms – the Lord’s
care and His
judgement.
He takes care – protecting and providing for – those who belong to Him, who regard Him with holy reverence. Those He blesses and will forever bless.
But He unflinchingly turns His face in judgement toward those who have dismissed Him as irrelevant and inconsequential, denying
His eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20) and rejecting His holy standards
.To those, His face unequivocally expresses His negative verdict of divine disfavour and curse.
This projected image of God’s eyes, ears and face confronts us with His all-knowing character. Nothing we do escapes His divine attention. We live every second of every day
coram deo – before the face of God.
Takeaway: In God’s economy, today counts forever.
The Creator of everything is concerned with my mind and my heart. What I think about
today is of great consequence to Him.
And so I pose these self-analytical questions:
What occupies my mind when I can think about anything at all?
Is my intellectual space overcrowded by negativity? Do the matters of the day – of the last 2 years – elbow out of my mind anything that is eternally profitable? That which births peace and joy in my life??
Has my Bible reading time been hi-jacked by the consumption of social media?
Has my worship of Christ become indifferent, cold, apathetic?
Am I a prism through which the glory of Christ is refracted to this dark world?
Is it time to repent??
- graphic from freeimages.com
