The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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As “The Lord’s Prayer” would have it: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and then we ask for bread, then we ask for forgiveness and then we ask for divine guidance and protection from satanic agendas (Matthew 6:9-13).
The Master calls Christians to seek first the reign of God and his righteousness and the other necessities of life will be given to them as well (Matthew 6:33).
How that last sentence must gall some seriously hurting and impoverished Christians. Explain it how we will, they live to please God, they want his will in their lives and everywhere else and still they live in soul-crushing conditions and many of them die in those conditions.
This much is clear: if God is faithless to a single trusting soul then he isn’t to be trusted. It can’t be that he is faithful to “most” of his commitments and ignores the rest because he doesn’t know what it is to be faithless!
How profoundly God trusts in his people! What an awful burden trusting can be when pain and loss and chronic difficulties and lack of understanding assault people who believe his promises. They don’t know what God’s up to half the time, they don’t know how present reality fits into his agenda and it so often seems his promises are empty or, at least, overstated; and yet here he comes, asking them to trust him. Is that not a majestic challenge even though it must at times seem almost unbearable? Millions say: In God we trust! And hosts of them are below the bottom rung of the economic and social ladder. The other side of that coin is God saying: In man I trust! One is as astonishing as the other!
Yes, yes, tell me all about our sinfulness and you’ll be speaking to the converted but don’t tell me we’re to see ourselves as crawling things that leave a trail of slime everywhere we go. G.K. Chesterton’s complaint against the wise Marcus Aurelius was that he didn’t “command the impossible,” the way Jesus did.
Make your requests for food, jobs and the other necessities of life in light of your prior request that God's reign become God’s will done on earth and in your life. That’s what Jesus called for. Seek first a life that conforms to God’s righteousness and the rest will follow!
When?
That’s a good question, an often necessary question. If God is faithful the rest will follow when God chooses. God’s great enterprise has not yet ended and it will not end until every promise of his is fulfilled to every seeking, trusting soul. One day he will make this world completely better and all those who gave their lives in trusting obedience to him will smile and say, “He did what he promised!” Jesus is the anticipation and guarantee of all that (2 Corinthians 1:20).
In seeking God’s reign and his righteousness we’re not to make our own determinations of what must happen but are to trust him and allow him to work toward his overarching purpose for the world and not just us. How we would run the show or map out God’s righteousness (his faithfulness to his commitments) is not necessarily how he chooses to do it or express his faithfulness (his righteousness). In conforming our lives to his will and purposes (which is seeking his righteousness) we will be and do what we know is like him and the rest we’ll work toward (note especially Romans 12:2 in this connection).
But again, what a challenge he lays before his elect people (the NT church, the body of Jesus Christ—Ephesians 1:22-23). It's certain to generate protests and groans in deeply troubled times (see Jeremiah 12:1-3a) but it is what it is—God's call. God is determined to bring creation to a glorious finale with Jesus as its Lord and he calls his NT elect to bear witness to and to live out that purpose before all nations.
So however difficult life is for so many of his people, Jesus showed us by life and teaching: “Before you ask for bread or any of life’s necessities pray this…”
