Darkness part 1: The Divine Sweepstakes
Long ago on Baldwin Brook Drive in Montgomery, Alabama, the mailman would bring exciting envelopes. The Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstake mailings would show up at our door, and I would drool over them. In 1974 Harold and LuEsther Mertz’s company began advertising on television. Even now I remember those ads and that despite heavily restricted TV watching. There is a whole compartment of memories in my brain that settle around those pipe dreams. See we never won, but that was not from my lack of begging my parents. My mom’s attempts at reality therapy nixed those, “You won’t win those things.”
I hoped she was wrong. She wasn’t.
Along came Ephesians 1:4, and God’s choosing. I grew up under the influence of verses like Romans 10:91 and the conviction of God in songs like Just As I Am and under the begging, convicting, preaching of pastors and teachers. Choose! Choose! Choose! Coupled with all of these were chapel movies of Heaven and Hell and black and white tracts warning of damnation.
Let me write the first sentence of the last paragraph again. Along came Ephesians 1:4. God chose me? Before he made the world? That was a splash of cold water. “You never win sweepstakes,” rattled the memories of my mom’s voice and by that time personal experience. “You invited Jesus into your life and are confident of your salvation, but whew that must have been close. What if God did not choose me?”
I “won,” but I was unsettled by my winning. Some say winning the lottery can run you into the ditch. Well, learning I had “won a lottery” of being saved made me at least get close to the ditch. I was happy and all to be on the heaven-path, but man, that was close!
That may seem a little tongue and cheek, but it is only sort of tongue and cheek.
Foreknowledge
How to get out of that quandary? The first step is in Romans 8:29, one verse after that great 28th verse.
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30–ESV)
In verse 29 Paul says that predestination, the choosing he did, was derived from looking forward into the choices we would make. I don’t struggle as much with his seeing events before they happen, so that was a help. My mind relaxed a little when it saw that verse. “Ok, I did have a role in this salvation stuff.”
Then, however, there were other verses telling us no one comes to God unless God draws him. Some verses tell us our hearts are desperately wicked and do not seek God. Others speak of God choosing Jacob and leaving Esau behind. Each of these verses plays a tune of their own and my mind wanting answers dodges here and dodges there like some panicked character trying to escape a maze. Just when you think you have your answer up explodes another verse. Dodge left; dodge right; run, run, run!
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