Friday, March 11, 2011

Don't shoot the messenger...

From Sophacles to Shakespeare, the Old West to current media, we have been admonished to keep our cool when receiving bad news. Easier said than done sometimes, but a good concept over all. It's advice that promotes fairness, backs up the biblical concept of control and helps cooler heads to prevail. I like it. Well, mostly....

What happens when the person who is delivering news to you is someone you absolutely do not like? You don't agree with their life choices, you feel they have been dishonest or even mean to you and yet you are receiving information from them. It becomes much more difficult to receive that information with grace when all you really want to do is pinch their heads off!

This is where the challenge really comes in. Can I listen to God AND do what He is asking of me even when the message is coming from what I view as an unlikely source? Am I willing to accept that the message God asks me to deliver to this blog may be looked upon in that light?

We all have value to God. He loves all of us and He is unswerving in that love. Each of His children are loved beyond measure and with an intensity that is shocking. We are ALL His favorites because He is not human and because He loves in a way that we will never understand with our human minds

If I truly believe that, and I do, then I have to believe that even those folks that have hurt me, lied to me, made me regret - even those people have value to me because they have value to God. Hits below the belt, doesn't it?

That was my thought when a friend of mine shared a verse that she had appropriated into her faith arsenal. She'd heard the verse not from a close friend over a relaxing cup of coffee, but from the mouth of a woman who was in the midst of tearing her family apart. It stopped her in her tracks, it made her take notice and it cemented the message in her head.

God can use anyone to make His point. Am I willing to listen? Am I so sure that I have the luxury of not listening because I don't like the person delivering the message? I don't have the privilege of being judge and jury and frankly, I don't want it. I have put myself in that position before and it was disastrous.... Am I willing to admit that I am wrong and that I need all the help I can get, even from "unlikely" sources?

The most unlikely source in the first century was Himself the son of a Heavenly carpenter. Jesus was not respected in His home town, yet His message was straight from the Father. How many people missed the message because of the messenger, because they refused to believe that an uneducated man could deliver such an important message? Set in that light it is a stark and frightening reminder of our own sinfulness.

How many important messages have I missed because I refused to credit the messenger as God instead of the courier who stood before me? God knows exactly what He is doing and who He is using to speak to my heart. I have to trust that and realize His message is infinitely more important than my comfort with who is the bearer.

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