Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church
Naomi, Mother of Jesus
Cultivate Contentment
Treasure the Truth
Open Your Hands
Guard Your Garden
Prize All Lives
Love Those Over You
Share His Rest
Share His Rest
por Walter Henegar
Displaced and disheartened by suffering and loss, Naomi found life no longer sweet but bitter. Yet her condition did not have the final say. God was at work through many agents in Naomi’s life, even her own heart, and brought her back from death to life, from bitterness to joy, from emptiness to fullness. Naomi found sweet redemption from God through Ruth, Boaz and a son through whom would come utter joy.
The tenth commandment is the most explicitly heart-oriented of the ten commandments, and therefore almost impossible to keep. Powerful forces all around us institutionalize and reinforce coveting as the American Way of life. The alternative to coveting, however, is not to kill our desires, nor even simply to moderate them, but to direct them toward God himself. God never promises to fulfill all of our earthly desires, and there will always be inequality between people in this life, but he always delivers on his promise to give us more of himself. In order to want God more than anything else, we need Jesus to keep God’s Law perfectly for us, to bear the penalty of God’s law, and to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. All this Jesus has done for us, pouring his own Holy Spirit into our lives, so that we can increasingly experience the Good Life he has made us to live.
The ninth commandment applies most directly to giving formal testimony in a legal context. In the ancient near east, most legal disputes were settled by appeal to two or three human witnesses, rather than documents, recordings or forensic evidence. Bearing false witness was an easy way to harm your enemies or advance your own interests. Today, the commandment extends naturally to any verbal misrepresentation of reality at the expense of other people. Because some forms of lying can actually protect other people, a Christian is called above all to “treasure” the truth. This means treating reality as a sacred trust, flowing from the trustworthy heart of God, which must be stewarded carefully for his glory and for the good of others. Every Christian inevitably fails to meet this standard in big and small ways, so we must continually return to the fountain of God’s grace. Jesus, the perfectly wise truth-teller, endured slander, mockery and false witnesses all the way to the cross, so that we could be forgiven. His Holy Spirit of Truth now lives in us, calling us to repentance and empowering us to change.
missing description
missing description
missing description
missing description
missing description
missing description
missing description