GodReflection: Life With The Unfair
It is easy to see many results of the fall provoked by Satan. I’ve not experience the perfect so I cannot compare my life to a pre-fall state. However, it doesn’t take much astuteness to realize on my best days I’m light years away from perfection.
It’s hard for my pea-size brain to imagine the full effect of Satan’s act.
What I don’t often think about is the effect the fall had on God. He lost what He valued most—His perfect relationship with man and woman the ultimate goal of creation.
God must hurt more than I can possibly understand.
Since the Garden of Eden God too lives Life With The Unfair.
He too is in the middle of a fallen world. Far more than I God must deal with the loss caused by Satan. He sees ever loss and feels every pain.
Thus, God finds Himself face to face with Life with the Unfair.
Jesus the very essence of God came to reflect the face of the Father so that I might see God’s heart and what He values. It seems to me that I must look to Jesus to see how he—and thus how God—faces life with the unfair.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, record the baptism of Jesus and immediately, as he emerges from the water he goes to the desert for an encounter with Satan. From his birth until his death throughout the earthly walk of Jesus Satan was always present. Jesus dealt with the unfair.
I surmise that Satan was in control to the point that Jesus could not feed every hungry person he encountered. Jesus did not heal every lame, blind, and deaf person in Palestine.
Jesus could not raise every person that died over the three years of his ministry.
All indications are that his father Joseph died while Jesus was still a young man and he couldn’t bring him back to life.
He could not make every Jew believe in his sonship received from the Father. He could only empathize in the moment and move forward with the Father’s plan for restoration which included crucifixion and resurrection.
Jesus walked the earth in the shadow of the unfair provoked by Satan.
He lived under the cloud of death, hunger, suffering, and deterioration set in motion by the devil when he did his damage and left the Garden of Eden.
Since Jesus lived in a world like mine I want to see what he did to combat the unfair.
Seven times the Gospels describe Jesus with the phrase he had compassion on them. He had compassion on the harassed and helpless he had compassion on the sick, the hungry, and the blind.
He had compassion on those who wanted to learn and he had compassion on people far from the Father as he told the story of a God who runs to meet His children.
Perhaps I should pick up on that and see with eyes of compassion everyone who crosses my path.
His miracles were prophetic.
I see Jesus in his day to day activities swell with compassion as he weeps with hurts and loss. He then does what was within his reach to correct the unfair.
As his compassion flowed he called upon the Father for specific signs and miracles directed at particular cases of need. These signs provoked faith and gave Satan a foretaste of his loss of power in the next reality.
Then, he recorded many of those miracles for me so that I too can believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you [I] may have life in his name (John 20:30).
When he himself was in the direct sight of the unfair Jesus demonstrates the soul of God who is willing to suffer and receive loss and abuse.
His unfair sacrifice provides blood from a cross, resurrection from a tomb, and ascension to the right hand of God as a preview of a time when God will win over Satan and life with the unfair will be a past tense expression.
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection on How Does Jesus Face Life With The Unfair?
God Reflection 