THE MAGNIFICENT RIDDLE

There are things we should know; but don't know how to know.  Too, there are those things we should see; yet can't while looking straight at them.  Of all of the truths that seem to hide in plain sight; I write today of the two (what I believe) biggest riddles.

1) The immeasurable and wonderful size of God and (2) the lowly state of man.  When these two can be openly and honestly evaluated, one's faith is enhanced.

We as people are not a god.  Life isn't about me.  Life is about God providing authentic life in me...and in you.  Self is to be sidelined as glory/credit is to be given to God. When self is sidelined and God is the star on the playing field, self is never in better position to experience awe and wonder.

What a riddle!

What has caused this magnificent riddle to go unnoticed?

First, man has a constant inclination, however innocent, to reduce God to our level of thinking.  We believe He thinks like we think.  We inadvertently bring Him down to being just a hair above our equal.  The result is that we think very little of our trimmed-down God for He must be nearly as limited as we.

When this occurs we tend to avoid studying the Bible and prayer for we lack confidence in Him being able to make a difference.

Second, we have a mistaken view of our own sin.  We have an immediate knack of comparison which is selfishly designed to alleviate our own guilt.  We can think we know how despicable we are.  Yet, when we can judge another as worse, this superficially soothes our consciences.

The truth is that we are so naturally deplete of goodness that the Son of God was crushed upon the Cross taking on our sins.  They were so deep and heavy that the lights went out in mid-day.  Darkness hovered to signal to the whole world forevermore that Jesus had become the kitty-litter of man's sin.  He absorbed each of our violations against God.

What a magnificent riddle.  God is more than we can imagine.  We are far more lousy that we can imagine.  Yet, He through His Son traded places and He became sin-ravaged and we got to turn over a new leaf.

Incredible.  Immeasurable.  Delightful.  Realistic.  Needed.  Necessary.  All of this for each of us.

Jesus solves the riddle.  He went to hell in our stead that we could go to heaven.  Learn of Him.