This Day in History: 0000-05-05

May 5 – Proverbs 19:3 

People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord. 

As I’ve spent the past several years working with some very broken and hurting people, I’ve seen the truth and the wisdom in this Proverb. In my own life as well, I can look back and see the many times I blamed God for the consequences of either my own rebellion or the rebellion of another person, even though the Bible makes it clear God has nothing to do with sin. 

So often our natural instincts in times of great distress involve the tendency to self-destruct. In our natural state we are fallen. Hopelessly lost. But we close our eyes to this truth and, in an effort to protect, we carefully build walls of absolute foolishness around ourselves. We reject the wisdom of God, believing it flawed compared to our own evaluations and ideas. We choose to instead believe our walls are doing exactly what we built them to do. We trust in our own strength, our own understanding, and our own perception of the world.  

Absolute foolishness! 

When we find ourselves still being hurt – often worse than before we built our walls, we add these new offences to our list of complaints against God. 

“If You love me, how could you let this happen?” we furiously scream at Him. 

I picture Him sitting on His throne in Heaven, brokenhearted over our rebellion, hurting along with us in our pain, repeating again and again, “My precious child, I have given you everything you need for victory. All you have to do is believe in Me, and humble yourself enough to reach out and take My hand. I’ll do the rest. But you refuse. This is not my doing, it is yours. I have given you the freedom to reject Me, just as I’ve given that freedom to those who have hurt you. But I’ve also provided complete healing for that pain. But it can only be found in Me. Oh how I wish you’d accept it! I love you so much.” 

Yet we plug our ears, close our eyes, turn our heads, and go on blaming God for our ruined lives. Is there any greater tragedy in this world?