A Better View from the Top

​Someone once said “if I can see farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”  That is how I feel as I read the accounts in the Old Testament.  Often God required great faith and trust from his people.  Even though he was visible to them in many ways, he often defied human logic and reasoning; which required pure trust in God.  It is easy to sit in 2019 and look back at those in the OT with smug attitudes of, “if I had been there and had witnessed what he showed them, I would have behaved much better than they did.”  To that attitude, I say “really?”  Do you really think they had it better than we?  I think not.  In fact, I know not!  I say this for two distinct reasons.  First, we have the advantage of learning from their mistakes.  God in his great wisdom, allows us front row seats, as we watch the scenes in the OT unfold.  So we have the added benefit of evaluating their actions, and in the end, seeing if they made the correct choices.  Secondly, and most importantly, we have the whole story.  Although we live in our part of the story one day at a time, God has laid out the entire story for us, from beginning to end.  From the first day of creation, until the final amen of Revelation.  It was the life, events, choices, and yes even mistakes of those who have gone before us in scripture, on whose shoulders we now stand, as we struggle to know an invisible God.  So what is required of us?  More!  Without a doubt.  We know more, we have seen more, so we definitely should do better than they. It shouldn’t take the voice of God in our ear to convince us, observing him in the ear of others should be sufficient.  Perhaps we need to change our focus from one of why we can’t to one of we can because of what we have been shown; in the lives of those whose stories blessed us, in the accounts of the word of God.  And on whose shoulders we now stand.  Lord increase our faith!  Blessings

​~Lamar