3 April 2014 - distracted

3 April 2014 - distracted

“Go down at once to your people
whom you brought out of the land of Egypt,
for they have become depraved.
They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them,
making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it,
sacrificing to it and crying out,
‘This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’

It sounds crazy, doesn't it?  But we do the same thing!  We receive some blessing from God and for a while we want to spend more time with him in prayer, in the sacraments, in scripture, anywhere we can find him.  But before long we forget where the blessing came from.  We are back to searching our entertainments, our hobbies, our work, and pretty much everything else but God for fulfillment and joy.  It is like a man who goes on a weekend retreat and really encounters the LORD.  He comes back resolved to spend more time in prayer so the encounter can fill more of his life.  A prayer time or two goes by without significant consolation and before long he is spending that time on the couch watching TV.  We hear him say to the himself about the TV, "This is your God, O israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"  Golden calves no longer sound quite so absurd.

Fortunately the LORD does not exterminate us from the face of the earth as he might justly do.  He reveals the severity of our offenses precisely so that we can turn from them.  He threatens punishment precisely so that people like Moses will stand "in the breach to turn back his destructive wrath."  We know that the LORD takes no delight in the death of a sinner.  All of this is because God remembers and favors his people, as the psalmist asks.

The Pharisees are willing to look anywhere but to Jesus. They reveal to us that we can see God at work and miss him.  We can see him at work and quickly forget.

The works that the Father gave me to accomplish,
these works that I perform testify on my behalf
that the Father has sent me.

We can even search the Scriptures and miss him if our priorities aren't right.

You search the Scriptures,
because you think you have eternal life through them;
even they testify on my behalf.
But you do not want to come to me to have life.

We are content for short times to rejoice in light like that of John the Baptist as long as it seems like something flashy, something new.  But when he decreases and Jesus increases we tend to seek the next novelty to entertain ourselves.

Why do we have this tendancy to look away from God?  Self-gratification!  We don't like placing our happiness and joy outside of our control, our sphere of influence.  We'd rather seek human praise, praise which we can manufacture, happiness that we can, or so we imagine, count on.

How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another
and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?

But really, the fulfillment these things can offer is much more fickle.  It provides a joy that is shallow and transitory.  Let's get over ourselves.  He is better at being God than we are.  The fulfillment which comes from the only God is that for which we are created.  Everything else points toward Jesus.  Let us lift up our eyes to him from whom comes our salvation.