It was an all-over errand kind of day. Thank You, Father, for a beautiful companion on the trek. I am more than blessed!

Romans 9:27-29 (<<click here to read the passage)

I wish I read more. I’ve always enjoyed reading –my preference is fiction. I can still remember the names of books I enjoyed in middle school! In my 20s I worked at a Christian bookstore. We were encouraged to read anything we liked because that made us a good resource for customers looking for a wide variety of books.

One thing you’d never do would be to stop reading a book partway in because things weren’t going well for the characters – death was seemingly imminent, circumstances were insurmountable, or relationships between key characters were at a total impasse! You had to keep reading! Things didn’t always turn out the way you wanted them to or the way you thought they were, but good storylines, for the most part, have a good way of wrapping themselves up.

William M. Greathouse was a great pastor, educator, and leader in the Church of the Nazarene. He authored volume 6 of the Beacon Bible Expositions which was on the book of Romans. In it he stated, Romans 9 has been called “The Hardest Chapter of the Bible.” Being that I have slogged through most of it at this point, I could be easily persuaded that that is the case.

I paused and wrote Like a Squirrel on a Feeder on Monday because I was stymied. I was tempted to not go any further because I was reading through some tough stuff…and today’s passage is no different. It is foreboding. It sounds ominous. These verses seem to say that the children of Israel don’t have much hope. All in all, they have rejected God’s Messiah. Very few of them accepted Jesus for who He was. Chapter 9 is a hard place…but it is most definitely not the end of the Book! …not of Romans nor the end of God’s Word!

The conclusion of Greathouse’s writings on chapter 9 read,

But the New Testament makes one thing crystal-clear: “The Lord is…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,” He reminds us, “so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). Thank God, the final judgment of each individual is in His hands. When that judgment has been dispensed, it will be seen by all that the Judge of the earth has done right. Meanwhile we can afford to leave our unanswered questions with Him, remembering always that “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13: 12). And in the time of our honest questioning the scripture teaches us always to say, with Whittier,

To one fixed hope my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!

God’s ways are majestic, but they are merciful. God’s power is over all, but it is controlled by love. The sovereign God is sovereign Mercy, whose purposes embrace all mankind to the end of time.

(p154, ©1975 Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City)

July 12th, 2023, Wed, 8:06 pm