Today’s Reading: Jeremiah 23:6; I Corinthians 1:30
Teachable moments. This is a concept that was introduced to me as a young camp counselor over 20 years ago and it still helps me out on a daily basis. With raising children or being around children for an extend amount of time; you will find that you are in the midst of teachable moments on a minute-by-minute base. Each moment that you are engaged with the younger generation presents opportunities to help guide and direct them. For example, you are training your child how to care for a pet. You show them how to feed the pet, how to groom the pet, how to clean the pet, and how to clean up after the pet. Ollie and I had dog-sat a couple of dogs a couple of weeks ago and I had to show him how to clean up after the dogs. It was a process that took a lot of time and will power. We did succeed and learned a couple of lessons. In this teachable moment, we saw that the fun and excitement of pets is balanced with the necessary chores and other obligations.
While managing and caring for multiple children, you will most often have to deal with conflict. Most of the time that conflict is present, the adult is not. This leads to the familiar he/she did this or that. When there are only two involved it is really difficult to rule in either way, unless there is a witness to help shed light on the situation. You have to decide who is right or wrong. The adult has to make a decision and carry out the consequences of the offending party.
Now let’s apply this to God and us. We all might have a notion or belief that we are good and right. But in the eyes of God, we are not right. We are not righteous. We are still the same as Adam and Eve when they left the garden. He has pity on us and loves us, but we are not completely whole in his eyes. We have fallen short of His Glory. It is only due to the gracious emptying and pouring out of Christ that we have the ability to come before God the Father. Christ was with God the Father eternally before he came to earth. Christ poured his majesty into human form. Then he poured his complete life and blood into us with the crucifixion, so that we might be able to take part into his righteousness.
God knows who was the first to commit the sin, but instead of battling with the blame game He himself understood that only He would be able to correct the suffering and pain. He has become our righteousness; no other is able to claim. This is the ultimate teachable moment: Christ telling us: I love you when you were wrong; I died to make you right.