Ex. 36-38
In the last part of Exodus 36:7 it says, “So the people were restrained from bringing”. They gave so abundantly for the building of the Tabernacle that they had to be told to stop!! Imagine what could happen if we all took this attitude toward giving to God’s work!
Mark 4:1-20
I gotta be honest – sometimes (most of the time, really), I just don’t understand how God works. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for the whole world. Yet it often seems that He deliberately hides himself from people. In addition to trying to silence the demons and those He healed, Jesus deliberately spoke in parables, “…lest they should turn and be forgiven.” (vs 12). Perhaps all of that was meant just for the Jews of His time because had they turned and been forgiven, Jesus might not have been crucified, and/or His salvation might not have extended to us Gentiles.
But if it is God who gives us the faith to believe and God who opens our eyes to perceive and our ears to hear and understand, then how is it anyone’s choice to be saved or not to be saved? I do understand why a long ago Sunday School teacher of mine firmly believed in Predestination for salvation. I came to the conclusion long ago that because God is eternal and, thus, not bound by time, things that seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum to us (because we see in a straight line) are really the same point on the circle in which He sees things. This would make Predestination and Foreknowledge the same thing in God’s eyes, which makes it impossible for us to parse out what was manipulated by God and what was done by our own choice. Remember Pharaoh and the 10 plagues – how sometimes it was Pharaoh who hardened his heart and sometimes it was God who hardened it?
I guess there are a couple of take-aways here for me. One is that it is our job to sow the seed and leave the harvest to God. The other is to be grateful beyond expression that, through whatever mechanism, God saw fit to put fertile soil in me that I might be counted as one of His own.