Matthew 1: Bad History
“and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” – v6
Bad history always seems to have this amazing tendency to stick around. In ten years, the name Zidane will only be remembered as a head-butt. Janet Jackson’s musical career will have been forgotten, but her nip-slip never will.
The human heart, for reasons unknown to us, contains some mysteriously compulsive desire to hold on to bad history. Deep within the human heart there lies an unexplained need to hold tight on to the head-butts and nip-slips of our own lives. I remember almost every promise I've broken, every failure to meet the expectations of my parents; I remember every selfish decision I've acted upon, and every stupid joke I've cracked. Sometimes when I'm by myself I think about these things and I always end up wanting somebody to hit me on the back of the head with a crowbar so I could forget.
I think if we constantly revisit the vivid recollections of our failures and incompetence in the secret of our own minds, unhealthy paradigms of the self begin to take shape in our subconscious'.
I always think about all the times I’ve failed as an attempted leader, and all the times I’ve failed to let God use me because of my fears. As a result, every time God places me before a new mountain to conquer, I can’t help but remember all the times in the past when I’ve failed to reach the summit.
But if God can bring about global salvation through a whole bloodline of bad history; if God chooses to remember, bless, and use David to bring salvation into the world one millennia later solely because of his God-seeking heart while disregarding his lies, his murder, his lusts, and his failures, then this must be true: God does not determine the destiny of his children by their bad histories, but by whether one holds a heart after His own, or a heart that is too occupied with its own failures.
Bad history always seems to have this amazing tendency to stick around. In ten years, the name Zidane will only be remembered as a head-butt. Janet Jackson’s musical career will have been forgotten, but her nip-slip never will.
The human heart, for reasons unknown to us, contains some mysteriously compulsive desire to hold on to bad history. Deep within the human heart there lies an unexplained need to hold tight on to the head-butts and nip-slips of our own lives. I remember almost every promise I've broken, every failure to meet the expectations of my parents; I remember every selfish decision I've acted upon, and every stupid joke I've cracked. Sometimes when I'm by myself I think about these things and I always end up wanting somebody to hit me on the back of the head with a crowbar so I could forget.
I think if we constantly revisit the vivid recollections of our failures and incompetence in the secret of our own minds, unhealthy paradigms of the self begin to take shape in our subconscious'.
I always think about all the times I’ve failed as an attempted leader, and all the times I’ve failed to let God use me because of my fears. As a result, every time God places me before a new mountain to conquer, I can’t help but remember all the times in the past when I’ve failed to reach the summit.
But if God can bring about global salvation through a whole bloodline of bad history; if God chooses to remember, bless, and use David to bring salvation into the world one millennia later solely because of his God-seeking heart while disregarding his lies, his murder, his lusts, and his failures, then this must be true: God does not determine the destiny of his children by their bad histories, but by whether one holds a heart after His own, or a heart that is too occupied with its own failures.
posted by Peter Wong at 8:59 PM
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