02 May 2005 Devotion for Today "Wearying God" Malachi 2:17

02 May 2005  Devotion for Today  “Wearying God”  Malachi 2:17

 

            This morning I was met by a pile of wet garbage strewn all over my porch.  Apparantly someone in my family put the trash out on the porch, not bothering to walk to the trash can to dispose of it.  I believe the excuse I heard was that it was pouring rain and that it was meant to be a temporary situation.  During the night, a cat or a rodent of some kind tore into the bag and scattered the garbage everywhere.   However, all of the family members were in a hurry to get to work and to school and did not have the time to clean up the mess.  That left me to do it.  The same kind of thing happened on Sunday morning with the church’s trash situation.  It was not pleasant, but it had to be done. 

            I got over my grumbling when I started to reflect upon God’s love and patience with us.  God is always picking up our mess.  He is constantly cleaning up the trash in our lives.  We consistently strew refuse around without regard for the unsightly and ugly thing it is for others to walk through and to deal with.  I wondered if God gets as weary as I do picking up other people’s garbage.  But as a consumer I create a certain amount of garbage myself.   God doesn’t produce it, yet He has always to clean it up.  I cannot complain too much after all, how many times in my life have I seen a mess, and then pretend that I didn’t see it hoping someone else would clean it up?  After the task was neatly bagged and disposed of properly, I prayed and thanked God for His willingness to do this for me.

In the Book of Malachi the prophet echoes God’s sentiments:  “You have wearied the Lord with your words; "Yet you say, "In what way have we wearied Him?" In that you say, "Everyone who does evil Is good in the sight of the Lord, And He delights in them," Or, "Where is the God of justice?" (Malachi 2:17).  In this passage we find at least one thing that wearies God and that is our constant barrage of words and empty promises and half-hearted commitments.  We say we will do something, and we don’t do it.  We make grandiose declarations and public statements without having any intention of following up on them.  Those statements sometimes have the same effect of a bag of garbage sitting out on the back porch overnight- waiting for the animals to tear into and scatter around.  We take advantage of God’s goodness when we presume upon Him like that.  We make commitments and then, when something better comes along- something more glitzy, exciting, more stimulating- we forget about that bag that we have left.

We often mistake God's grace for apathy, His love for weakness. The

Israelites made this mistake; they were wrong on two counts: They mistook the Lord's patience for impotence and as a result, they lived how they pleased.  The result:  the Lord was wearied and  judged them.

            How do we view the Lord? As an apathetic figure for whom we hold little regard, One who is obligated to clean up our messes, or as a Holy God who demands for His people to live in obedience to Him?   This week you will doubtless run into messes found in other people’s lives.  Thank God for the grace He has given you to help that brother or sister with the “disposal.”

            Have a blessed day.

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@earthlink.net

 

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