Thursday, November 29, 2012

The LORD Says, I Am God; There Is No Other

“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.”
— Isaiah 45:22 (NRSV)
We, as a people, people designed and created and maintained by God, continually run from God, until we realise we need God, and then we seek—sometimes with all our hearts—after the One who can save us for life: the only One.
We are wrecked without God.
In our idolatry, our worship of things other than God, and so many things are these we cannot count them, we ignore God. We despise grace. We cheapen it. We have the temerity to insult Jesus, again and again, whether by arrogance or hypocrisy. No matter how pious we get, we always have the potential for this propensity.
But throughout time and eternity God speaks a consistent message. The Lord says: “I am God; there is no other.” These are obviously red-lettered words; words akin to Jesus’ words; the words of Yahweh. These are words from the Author of Life. These are the words of the One who will finish the physical life at the correct time, for the majesty of Divine Glory.
Those who would earnestly seek God will find the Author of their lives. For the One who knows our lives from back to front, and every event before it happens, knows our hearts on this matter: our seeking after the living God. God will know us and we will know God, by the essence of our committed repentance, heartfelt and true.
Acknowledging We Cannot Shift the Inevitable
“To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear, that I am the Lord,” says God.
Worship of anything other than God is totally worthless, meaningless, and a blight on the incontrovertible truth. Yet God knows our tendency to turn and face the world of folly. Such is God’s acceptance of this fact—that we are inherently unfaithful—he caused a binding and irrefutable redemption. He sent his Son, and we scourged him. As we scourge God each day in our idolatry, Jesus was scourged. And, at our worship of Jesus, accepting we are sinners with an ongoing problem, still God forgives us! God understands us.
The inevitable fact stands.
A time is coming—if we could call it a time—when all things, all knowledges, and all realities, will be brought back comprehensively to God, in every sense of entirety.
God will be worshipped purely and cleanly then. Then we will have the fullness of rest in our worship, to know, via consistency and a wondrousness of unadulterated love, the Lord is One.
***
The Lord says: “I am God; there is no other.” What we do with this fact is up to us. But it is the most important decision—to follow Jesus or not—we will ever make.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.




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