Friday, August 2, 2019

According to Design

Monday, August 5, 2019

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.  Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord.  Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.  Colossians 3:18 – 21

I was going to begin this devotion with this sentence:  If only Paul hadn’t said it that way.  But, ultimately, this isn’t Paul talking!  If this is truly God’s Word, then it is He who speaks; it is also He who designed the family, giving us the way of love as our motivation, pathway, and attitude for how it all works best.
I know; I know…this goes against the grain of modern culture’s understanding of human freedom – we are to be independent, self-sufficient, inviolable, and so completely in charge of our lives, consummate masters of our fate, captains of our souls, and lost as a goose in a snowstorm!
So, is that it, Russell?  Is the world upside down…and you’re the one who’s got it all together?  I hardly have to answer that; I’ve lived long enough, and sinned big enough to know better.  I’m not the one who has it all right, but, like one beggar sharing the news with another beggar about where he’s found bread, if you’re asking about design – how God intended for us to be, and live, and act…well, I can point heaven-ward towards the Designer.  In so doing, if we’ll be honest, we see the difference between Heaven’s perfection and what’s going on down here.
For my two-cents, upside-down is a mild way of assessing where we are as a human family, let alone husbands, wives, children, and cousins by the dozens.  The family, as a nurturing, loving, safe unit is an endangered species.
One salient point for our thoughts today.  God’s word is not male-dominant and oppressive; it’s just the opposite…it is all love.  The problem is, we humans have corrupted the meaning of that word, until it is no more recognizable than a fox in a chicken suit given the keys to the hen house.
God’s love is agape, the word meaning doing the best for the other person’s sake.  That’s what God did as Jesus on the cross.  It wasn’t that God preferred to suffer a cruel, humiliating death on a cross, taking our punishment for sin…it was what was required for our redemption.  And nobody but the Son of God could accomplish that; love compelled Jesus to choose the cross.
Love is always a choice…it hardly has anything to do with romance.  When a woman becomes a wife, the act of her submitting to her husband is a choice.  It’s the same choice when I get on the Interstate.  I can choose to drive the way the designer of the road set-up as the safest, most enjoyable, most socially-beneficial way to arrive at my destination – or I can drive like Beelzebub, half in this lane, weaving into that one, 150 miles-per-hour, refusing to brake when the traffic slows.  I may have my fun (for a few moments), but road rage would be nothing compared to what will inevitably happen when reality shows up.  Same thing for the family design God gave us.  Submitting in love, doing the best for those with whom we choose, and God paces in our path, is the design.  Like it or not, that is how we’re hard wired for better or worse!
For You Today
In marriage, parenting, or anything else to do with family, career, and all interpersonal relationships, submission isn’t a cuss word; it’s the key to design, Intelligent Design, of how we’re made, and how we function best.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com        Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

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