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Paradoxes
By Scott Harrup | September 16, 2008
Every morning I take my blood pressure medication and sip my coffee. Strong coffee. I let the caffeine and hydrochlorothiazide vie for supremacy.
I’m also prone to reading a thriller in bed before lights out. You’re getting sleepy… Read the next chapter!
Lindsay and I have an evening ritual. “Dad,” she asks, “have you put the blankets on my bed?”
I pull four off her blanket stand and arrange them across her bed. She crawls under the sheet. I kiss her goodnight. I’m almost out the door …
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to turn the fan on.”
Go figure.
We have a treadmill in the basement so I can run without going anywhere, fertilizer in the garage so the grass can grow quicker before I cut it, an answering machine to intercept the telephone and life insurance payable if death occurs.
But all that is small potatoes compared to the greater paradoxes of life, the big-kahuna questions you can never answer on your own. For those I need a resource that offers more than human wisdom with all its contradictions and pitfalls.
The Bible is that resource. Yes, it has paradoxes of its own. God as Three in One. The cosmos created out of nothing. Righteousness in God’s sight established by His grace but evidenced by our good works. New life through Christ experienced simultaneously with aging and physical decay. The list goes on.
A final thought. One of the greatest paradoxes described in Scripture is one manufactured through human inconsistency. You can read about it in Matthew 18:23-35.
Jesus told a parable about a wealthy ruler and a servant. The servant owed this king a fortune. There was no way he could repay it. But instead of throwing the servant into debtor’s prison, the king completely forgave the debt. Then this servant, who had just enjoyed the most positive reversal of fortune imaginable, found some poor joker who owed him a few pennies. When he couldn’t squeeze a payment out of the guy, he threw him in prison.
Read it for yourself. It’s an amazing display of paradoxical behavior.
As I’m rereading it, I’m asking myself how I can make my relationships more consistent with the eternal reversal of fortune God has afforded me.
Topics: Bizarre, Family Life, Bible |
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