What's To Come

The Old Testament gets a bad reputation. I'm reading it again now and am a few chapters into Exodus and I've gotta say, God has been super nice so far. Granted, up until the Ten Commandments show up, the Israelites (or Hebrews or Jews or whatever) don't have a lot of rules to break. Like when Abraham is supposed to have a kid, so his barren wife says "uh, duh, baby up my servant" and he does. Even though nowadays, we would all be like "Umm, you can't do that 'cause that's not your wife." Jacob is tricked into marrying one girl when he really wants to marry the other, hotter sister, so he ends up marrying both and tricking their father along the way.

These patriarchs, these forefathers of ours were pretty deceitful. In fact, Jacob's name and history both indicate deception. But God's blessings for them weren't dependent on their morals, on the good or bad they did beyond simple obedience to God.

I guess I'm just prepping myself for what's to come. We all know that God blasts the nation of Israel with plagues and various diseases every time they aren't faithful, and while it seemed unfair to me when I was younger, I'm thinking that it's super fair now. There's this whole contrast in society between doing something right to do something right, and doing something right to avoid getting caught (and falling right back into the default wrong when you aren't being watched).

People can be better and God knows it. Our default is to be good, and if we stay fit and healthy with righteous living, we don't need external help outside of God. But if we stop letting Him be our everything, we're stuck with depending on things that we aren't allowed to depend on. And when you're a nation that is led by God, God notices. It's not like dodging a cop. It's dodging an omniscient, omnipresent God. He's gonna see and hear.

Life shouldn't be about avoiding consequences. It should be about living well so that there aren't consequences to face.