WE SHALL NOT DIE - Reading With the People of God #17নমুনা

Only Better

When we go out to eat, if my husband chooses the same thing as another in our party, he will say, “I’ll have what they’re having, only better.” This comment confounds some, yet makes others chuckle. That’s how we are. We want better. Whether food, material things, relationships, even Jesus, we want BETTER.

In reading Micah 5, we will find a strong teaching of who the Messiah will be. Note the characteristics in this passage. This coming Messiah will be BETTER! I can’t help but reflect on the characterization from the recent series, THE CHOSEN , where the Pharisees and even Judas quoted these passages and hung every belief on the might and majesty they imagined would come with the Messiah. It was their ignorance and naivete that kept them from understanding the truth of who Jesus was. Believing only what they see and experience in the here and now kept them from experiencing the global God for all eternity. While Micah’s words are truth of God’s ultimate triumph, we are to read with recognition that God’s promises are beyond just the current time. Like many promises in the Bible, the impact is far beyond our imagination, far beyond our physical or temporal understanding. Longing for peace, we all can mistake peace in this world for the inner peace or even ultimate peace that passes all understanding.

Jesus’ ministry challenges the literal and physical thinking of the law of the Pharisees as they interpreted the Law given by God. Our meager comprehension of how to follow God’s direction limits us in expecting solutions now, yet forgetting that God is working now AND for our ultimate eternal future. As we read the hope found from the prophet Micah, and Jesus’ teaching in Luke, consider how the people were listening then, as well as how we listen now. Even the disciples who were so close to Jesus could follow and rely on what was laid out before them, but it took further acts of both faith and failure to know the difference between salvation, which is eternal, and rescue from current circumstances. In this way, God wants us to seek better; not just for our lives now, but for the kingdom which is here AND eternal.

Today, am I listening beyond my circumstances? Am I listening to God’s word for what is better in my eyes or in God’s?

Primer contributed by Gaylyn Mott, Christ follower, teacher, musician, yarn artist, member of Cornerstone Community Church of Chowchilla.