Monday, January 12, 2015

Isaiah 64

(January 11, 2015)
                We in the Church like to believe that there is a ‘righteous’ group (us, usually) and a ‘wicked’ group.  We like to believe that, since we are part of the righteous group that we are destined for great things and can count on the Lord to recognize our righteousness and reward us accordingly.  We likewise expect the Lord to recognize the wickedness of those who we believe are wicked (our enemies, of course) and punish them accordingly.

                As a brief transition, I keep (kept?) bees, and I would love to sit around and watch them at work as they moved in and out of their hives.  Of course I was utterly unable to tell one bee from another, although I could tell one genetic strain from the other after a while (each hive had a number of genetic strains).

                Here is the point that I want to make – our righteousness in comparison to the Savior is a far greater gulf than my intellect in comparison to the bees.  The bees were so far below me intellectually that I was effectively incapable of telling one bee’s intellect from another’s.  The only thing I could tell were which bees were placid and which bees wanted to chase me around the bee yard and try to sting me.

                In a similar sense, though we might take pride in our righteousness (neglecting basic awareness of the irony of this conceit) we are so far away from the Lord in righteousness and the most wicked and most righteous are still close together on the scale in comparison to Him.  We take pleasure in being the “smartest bee in the apiary” when we would be better off taking pleasure in being the bee that the Lord could count on not to try and sting Him (metaphorically speaking).

                Our righteousness, then, is not found in our obedience (important though that is) but rather is found in our willingness to live our lives for Him and to sacrifice our wills upon His altar.

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