When life gets hard there is just one place to go, to the Word, to God. And I found a few verses I was enjoying last week including this one:
Ps 32:10 "Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him."
I came across a couple verses with this idea of the Lord's love surrounding us and it just felt like a verbal hug from God which was just what I needed.
So I was reviewing this section of scripture at lunch when suddenly the first part of the verse struck me in a new way. I always read these verses with a sense of the wicked vs those who love the Lord but that day I realized we were ALL the wicked but some of us choose to trust in the Lord. "Many are the woes of the wicked". We are all wicked and we all have many woes. "But the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him."
Several years ago I was in this bible study and the question of original sin came up. We asked ourselves if the bad things of life are the result of original sin. I was going through infertility at that time and mis understood the question a little and talked about how when bad things happen that does not mean you sinned, I wasn't infertile because of my own sin. They all agreed and we moved on. I don't know if everyone mis understood the question or if they were too nice to correct me but the following week I saw the question again and realized my mistake. It wasn't a question of whether each of our personal sins causes our own bad things to happen, but whether or not Adam and Eve's sins brought bad into the world of which we are still affected to this day.
It is really a fascinating question because it allows me to wonder, would anyone suffer infertility if Adam and Eve hadn't first sinned? Would there be pre-mature death? Or what about economic turmoil which causes you to loose your job and your house? Think of all the evil and problems in the world and wonder, would these things exist if Adam and Eve had not sinned?
But then I wonder something else. If Adam and Eve hadn't sinned, wouldn't someone else along the way have done it anyway? Because, we are all wicked. And our morality didn't rest on whether or not Adam and Eve made the choice, we all have the opportunity to make the choice and we all fail. The question is, do we turn back to God and trust Him? Do we allow the Lord's unfailing Love to surround us despite our sinful nature or do we turn our backs on Him and ultimately perish?
So really, the sin in this world is probably a combination of both Adam and Eve's sin and our sin. They let it in but no generation has ever been able to get free of it. If I was in the garden, I suppose I would have done the same thing.
I am wicked and many are my woes but I trust in the Lord's and am surrounded by His unfailing love for me. The Psalm ends with:
"Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!
And, thanks to Jesus, that is me too!
I have to disagree about all being wicked. A wicked person words intentional and his or her actions are planned and well thought out,
ReplyDeleteA righteous person sins on the spur of the moment. You could call it temporary insanity. They can sin for lack of knowledge, making choices without asking God. The word of God says "our thoughts our
his thoughts, neither are our ways His ways. I think we as Christians tend to assume slot of our thoughts are of God because we think them and fail to inquire of God. We think because we desire something it's from God. We make our mistakes by not seeking God. Of couse we are all sinners and our righteousness is as filthy rags. The blood of Jesus cleaned us from all unrighteousness. We need to walk in Christ righteousness and not our own. Wallking in our own thoughts and thinking without inquiring of God and not knowing what God's Word says is self righteousness is. Read Proverbs 10 and 11 to see what God's word says