CREDIT: Sergey Kozak
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
“Why didn’t I think of that!?” Sometimes, when I’m trying to solve a problem, my knowledge and wisdom can blind me. While the answer is obvious, my “engineering brain” can overthink and make things harder than needed. Then someone like my wife says, “Did you ever think about (insert obvious answer here)?” Well, what do you know, that was easy! “Why didn’t I think of that!?”
We all have problems in our lives. But the most critical problem of all is the same for all of us. And the solution is quite easy. Yet we can make it a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Our wisdom, knowledge, and pride combine to lead us to ignore the only remedy – and it is a simple one.
This problem? Our sin and the eternal separation from God it causes. Our solution? We try all manner of things to ward off sin’s eternal effects – elaborate prayers bundled with good deeds … packages of complex rituals and worship practices … or some other over-complicated set of things. Yet for all our efforts, we’re still unsatisfied. There must be more to it! And so, we and many others continue our search, ending up caught in an endless cycle leading right back to where we started.
Jesus prays, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 11:25) It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want us to see the solution. But He doesn’t want us trying to figure out how to make it happen on our own. Or to say, “That’s too easy! There’s gotta be another way I can try.” The solution to our problem is simple, trust in our Father’s promise of forgiveness through Jesus. The truth – it is that easy for us, there is no other way. Let’s thank God that He thought of it and trust Him to free us from our sins and eternal death through Jesus Christ, His only Son.
In Christ’s Love,
Pastor Jim