October 7
‘Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching.’ Ephesians 4:14a
Bible reading: Luke 4:14-30 (Go to the Bible passage)
When the Lord Jesus returned to Galilee, He was received with a lot of goodwill. ‘And everyone praised Him’ (:15). ‘The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him’ (:20). ‘All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips’ (:22). But when all these benevolent people did not get what they expected, the goodwill did not last (:28,29).
This surprising reversal of the opinion of people we see often in the Bible. Just remember in the New Testament the praise Jesus received when He entered Jerusalem (Luke 19: 36-40) and shortly thereafter: ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ (Luke 23:21). It were likely the same people who shouted the former and the latter…
‘Nothing as changeable as man,’ says a Dutch proverb. ‘Like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind (…) double-minded and unstable in all they do,’ says the apostle James. Is there no end to this pathetic behavior? Thank God, there is liberation of this awful instability. That is, when we acknowledge that we are, essentially, the same as the people we read about in the Bible.
Is it not the same with us, that we are inclined to praise God when we are sailing before the wind? But woe betide us when we meet trials, then we grumble and we too crucify Jesus another time. How many trials are still needed in our lives before we learn to praise God in all circumstances? For even if nothing would remain of everything this world has to offer us, then still the greatest blessing of all would remain: that God, the Eternal Faithful, will never forsake us.

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