I'm not really talking about the scale to check my weight, although yeah, I use that more than maybe I should.
And I'm not talking about the scales at work, where we gently lift and set down babies. And then do it again when we don't like the number.
No, the scale I use is abstract, but much more dangerous.
I like to call it realism. It sounds better. It doesn't bite so hard, when you call it realism. People can get behind realistic...people don't like words like negative or critical. So, yeah....realistic.
The truth is that this realism comes directly from the fear that resides deep within me.
I constantly measure and weigh everything in my life. Holding it up to examine it...is it good? Where are the cracks? How can this improve? How will this fail?
Whether it's my own soul, or a friendship, or an actual gift, I am constantly in doubt of it's goodness. Because what if it breaks?
So I get my scale out...on one side I place the good gift I'm given, and on the other side I place what I think it should be, or what I see that others have on facebook, or just something I saw on TV once.
And then I see the scales tip. In a very realistic direction. And I'm disappointed with the gift. Or I see how it can fail and I get so afraid because now it's just a waiting game till it breaks.
I cannot accept good gifts for what they are because I'm so fearful they'll break that I won't pick it up and embrace it.
This verse was made for people like me:
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11
He had to put that in there because of people like me. Because I doubt that God is good, or that he would be good to me, or that the gift is as good as he says it is.
And all that is is a lack of understanding exactly what a good gift the cross is. Because if I understood that, then I would open my arms to whatever he's giving me and call it good and right. I would hand my scales in and let him break them with his unmeasurable goodness.
Despite the fact that I have not understood how to not find his gifts lacking, he continued to pour them out on me. If that's not a good and perfect God, what is?
He's teaching me. Patiently and slowly, he's teaching me that I can accept his gifts and that he is overwhelmingly good. I don't have to live in this fear.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:4-9
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