How inexact it all is

I guess I wish the Scriptures were something more than what they actually are. I know that in them is exactly what we need to do to please God, grow in Christ-likeness, live in peace with God and others, but it is so maddeningly inexact at times it makes me want to pull my hair out. It seems to me that the requirements of the Law, in all their complexity and impossibility to attain or justify, were very detailed and very knowable. I mean the Festivals and their celebration, the sacrifices, the amount that must be tithed and contributed to the Lord is all there and there seems to be very little but black and white in the whole thing.

Now, there are the amorphous and often nebulous requirements of things like love, generosity, grace...all of them clearly articulated in the mind of God Himself but nowhere do I find checklists of what the generous or loving thing is in every situation I find myself in. It surely isn't loving to let my sons do whatever pleases them but when do I intervene? When does justice trump my propensity to show mercy and grace?

I know God is after my heart, my allegiance, and most of all my love born out of gratitude for who He is and what He has done (philosophical implications aside from expressing gratitude for who He is) but couldn't He have grabbed it another way? Couldn't He have laid it out so plainly to this thick-headed noob that this is the path - walk this way?

I am sure He could have and, frustrations aside, I know that what He has laid out for me is all I need. Sufficient in all He will not stand for my scrutiny. Mystery that He is He will not subject Himself to my search.

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