God grieves?
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30–ESV)
Let us jump to a place in Isaiah where we can read the sadness of God.
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.
4 Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged. (Isaiah 1:2-4–ESV)
That passage paints the effect people have in the heart of God. It is God grieving, and other passages continue this theme.
I could make an effort at explaining why God did this, but it would only be words. I think it would be like Dolly Parton’s words without Whitney Houston’s delivery.
I will skip that effort for now. Let us walk on an bridge right over the top of it and back to Ephesians 4:30. What did Paul write? He wrote, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”
God made us
Not only so, but he is sad about it. It grieves him to see this outcome. These types of passages teach us that God is deeply invested in us. When we loose our Final Four, March Madness, game because of an unnecessary foul 1 it hurts him. When we load the bases with few to no outs, get no one across and lose it feels bad. Life and eternity are more than sports. God cares about the spiritual wins and loses along the way.
An experience in ophthalmology
I am in charge of the training program for Ophthalmology at Augusta University. One of my tasks is to guide the interview process whereby graduates from medical school join up with us to learn the ways of eye surgery.
Getting one of these positions is coveted; the competition is stiff, and the medical students who are accepted into programs across the nation are in a class of their own. Anxiety runs deep for these men and women as the day approaches where they learn if they were drafted into one of these training leagues.
I heard a story some years ago of a candidate who deemed that they needed to do some additional things, e.g. research or clinical rotations, to pad their application. I think that they decided this at the last
How do you think the advisors of this medical student felt? Grief, sadness. So much more was there for the taking; the hopes and desires this medical student had for themselves came to naught because of their ill-founded last minute decision.
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