Reading in Genesis, specifically Genesis 26. The commentator, John Harris, thinks a theme we can take out of this is how God gets his will done on the earth. And a corollary, how much of our life is preordained?
Abraham obeyed God. But God chose Abraham before he obeyed. God chose him. What would have happened if Abraham had not obeyed? Or does this question have any meaning?
I am like the commentator. This is what inspired me to type this blog. The commentator remembered as a small child asking God to guide him in trivial choices, like whether to choose vanilla or chocolate ice cream. In doing this he thought he was pleasing God. I remember doing that too. I was a young child going to Sunday School. Neither of my parents were believers. So I had no one to ask. I was going on my childlike understanding of what I was being taught in Sunday School. I remember a well thought out curriculum, sitting cross legged on the floor of a small room with an adult teacher who was very well meaning. My mental picture is of a dark room, sitting in a circle. We had four page brochures of Bible stories. There were color drawings, like comic books.
Anyway something I learned got me to thinking about God's will. Perhaps it was just such a story as that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I remember as a boy of 9 or 10 asking God whose house I should go to first when leaving the house in the morning to go play. I was often the first up amongst several children my own age who lived nearby. My mother might have fed me breakfast, I'm not sure. But I wanted to do what God wanted me to do. I wanted to please God, the same way a child that age wants to please his parents. I would ask God to speak to me, then take the first thought that came into my mind as the answer. Within reason of course. As adults when we are faced with a difficult decision do we still sometimes want to do the same thing, get an east answer spoken in our ear by God?
But this is a childish way of seeing our relationship with God.
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