REAL and IDEAL

How many times have you made a shopping list and walked into the supermarket to shop? When you got home and went through your list and checked what you had bought to see if they tally, what did you find out? The difference represents our failings as humans, the list is the ideal, what you bought is the reality on the ground. It is faith and strength of character which will minimize the difference, and Christ embodies these two characteristics.

I have not been able to blog in the past three weeks due to unavoidable circumstances as it is always said. The fact is in an ideal situation I would have still blogged in spite of what was going on. The reality on the ground was that I was not able to connect my thoughts and write. This is one thing I learned in college Chemistry, that a reaction proceeds differently in an ideal environment (standard temperature and pressure) as compared to a real environment where the pressure and temperature are subject to external forces.

As Christians we live in the real world, it is the picture of heaven that presents the ideal. Jesus also had a taste of real encounter when he was tempted by the devil in Luke 4 and he prevailed. This comes after 18 years period in Christs life which we are not told what he was up to. For him to come and encounter the devil with the word of God publicly, it is obvious he was reading the word of God in private during this years. I have learned and come to believe that to win public battles you have to first win them in private.

Yes, we desire ideal situation but even in the lab, the ideal conditions are not real but created for a specific reason. In the real world we meet real temptations; God says that there is no temptation that we will meet that is uncommon to man, but even if we meet the uncommon He will provide a way out.Build on your private victories because they will determine how you perform in public.Christ is walking with us, so you will never walk alone.

PEACE

Reverse Call: please call me –thank you.

I waited patiently for the Lord’s help; then he listened to me and heard my cry.  Psalms 40:1

I have the privilege of sometimes teaching pre-teens class in our church’s Sunday school. One thing I get is that I am a product of a different world from the one they are growing up in. These twelve year olds have never heard of a reverse call, may be even you are not aware of it. When you tell them how we used to write love letters and spray perfume onto the pink paper they say that is ancient. They all have mobile phones to call and text and get feedback instantly. Yet I do not see myself as that ancient, I accept that the world is changing very first.

I went to primary school in Western Kenya and my dad lived and worked in Nakuru. One day when I was ten years old I went to the public telephone booth at Tiriki post office and asked the telephone operator to connect me to my dad. She talked to my dad and my dad accepted to receive my call at his cost- that is a reverse call. It was a kind of ‘please call me, thank you’ service we have in our mobile phones, and I would talk to dad and tell him of all my problems. He would not solve them then but I would be happy that my father knows and that he will do something about it.

Prayer is our way of making a reverse call to our father who art in heaven. There is nothing we can do to deserve His grace and mercies so we can never pay for the cost of the call. I know that my prayers are neither answered instantly nor how I would love them to be answered. I thus rest assured that God has heard my call for help and He will come through for me in due time. I do not need to pay or justify anything; it is a reverse call at my father’s cost.

King David in the bible knew how to make these reverse calls. Reading through the Psalms gives me a view of a man who was really after God’s own heart. Prayer is not easy nor is it fun but it is our only gateway to God. Go ahead and make the call to dad, He will accept your call, listen and answer you and still foot the cost of the call.

© March 7, 2011