The cure for the sin of pride should be the reminder God
gave Adam, " By
the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for
out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We should realize that we have not always
been, there was a world before we came into being, and the world will go on
after we are gone. Does that mean our
lives have no meaning? No, it means that
we need to know and understand what meaning they have and we cannot fully know
such things without reference to the one who created it all. Humility accepts the facts about who we are
and what we are and also acknowledges that there is One who is eternal. Humility also accepts the fact that all human
life is transitory, not just our own, and bows the knee only to the one who is
eternal. My life is lived unto Him
alone.
The men who pass by the beaten man would have been able to
tell exactly why they passed by without helping. They had good religious reasons for avoiding
the situation along with whatever prejudice might have been there, like the man
who asked the question that prompted the parable. They didn't recognize him so they didn't see
helping him as an obligation under the neighbor definition. They were on their way to work in religious occupations
and contact with either blood or a dead body would have meant that they
couldn't discharge their obligations to the Lord. He might also be a Gentile and if so, same
deal. Jesus chose a Samaritan as the
hero, one of the hated race that claimed to be the true Israel. At the end, when Jesus asks who was the
neighbor the answer is not, "The Samaritan", but, rather, “The one
who showed him mercy.” We, all of us,
are created in the image of God and this parable fits with Matthew 25 when
Jesus teaches, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of
these my brothers, you did it to me."
An angel is sent to unleash yet another woe, the plague of
locusts whose sting is like a scorpion. Why
not a scorpion, why a locust with power like one? The plague will bring only pain and suffering
but not death itself. Death would be a
welcome relief but it will not come. What
sounds like cruel punishment, an evil from the Lord, can be seen in a different
light can't it? The mercy in the
punishment is the same as the mercy in the bronze serpent in the wilderness in
Numbers 21. Repentance, turning to Jesus
as savior means that ultimately there is relief, eternal relief. At this point, time is short and the Lord is
trying all means possible to get people's attention. Sometimes, as CS Lewis said, "God whispers
to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it
is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
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