18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’
This chapter is full of image and lessons in placing our trust and faith in God to do what seems impossible to us. We of course have grace through Jesus, but we shouldn't take that for granted and we can see in this chapter how our actions and lack of faith hurt and anger God.
All that said the verse that jumped out at me is because it talks of the impact of actions of a parent on their children. This is still true today, look how hard it is for kids to break out of the cycle that was started by their parents. Whether it be poor eating habits, managing money or far more destructive problems like drugs, alcohol, sexual misbehavior the list goes on.
Everyone one of my actions has an impact on someone, including me and my relationship with God. I have a few struggles right now. Work is consuming am I modeling a way that might kids will follow letting work be too much of a priority in life? At work I'm struggling with being negative about a particular person who is under my skin and that of others--but rather than rising above it I am contributing to the negative conversations. Controlling my tongue should be the easy one to fix, the other may take a more drastic action that I don't know if I'm ready to do but I did tell my boss when I took this job over a year ago I would fail at the job before I failed with my family and at times I feel like I'm not sticking to my guns with that statement.
looking forward to the weekend over here, love being on this journey with you even though it is from miles away.
knut
The work balance is a really tough one. Design is pretty much an in the office sort of thing....but, I completely understand. It occupies a lot of my waking thoughts, and at times is way to high on the priority scale.
ReplyDeleteStay mindful of it, and you'll be fine!
44 Nevertheless, in their presumption they went up toward the highest point in the hill country, though neither Moses nor the ark of the Lord’s covenant moved from the camp. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and attacked them and beat them down all the way to Hormah.
The biggest thing I took from this chapter, is "my plan vs. his plan"
Here the Israelites were dancing around his plan, but not directly trusting and following....and they were defeated.
tp