Snapshots and Panoramas

There have been several passages I’ve had to chew on and it’s like chewing gristle.

If I didn’t already know He is Love, these stories would make me think He wasn’t much better than pagan gods.

What did some of the Israelites think of Him?

Numbers 11 – They complain about the food and ask for meat.  God says, “I’ll give you meat.” He sends quail.  They eat the quail and God releases a plague on them.

Numbers 12 – God strikes Miriam with leprosy and when Moses interceded on her behalf, God said, “Nope.  I want this to be like her father spit in her face.”  This one hurts me more than the others because God is likening Himself as Father . . . who is spitting in the face of His daughter.

Numbers 15 – The stoning of a man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath. Uhh . . . extreme?

Numbers 16 – God kills those who opposed His ordained leadership.  And their families.  We’re not talking quick heart attacks here, we’re talking about being crushed or burned to death. Not just the sinful dads, but the mothers and children, too.

After Numbers 16, I quit.

I don’t understand Him.

I asked Him to help me reconcile what I know to be true (He is Love) with what I’m reading in Scripture (Love destroying the objects of Love).

He said it’s the difference between a snapshot of detail and a panoramic view.

A professional photo of me is me, but it is not all of me.  If you know me by my professional photo, and then meet me in non-professional-photo circumstances, you might mis-judge me.  You will reject the parts of me that don’t match the snapshot you have of me.

Affection and nurturing kindness is a part of Him, but it is not all of Him.  Iif we think that it is “all” of Him, then we reject the other facets of Him that He’s expressing. Worse, we begin to blame the people.

“The Israelites were complaining!  Look at all the things they witnessed!  The miracles!  The guidance!  To complain in the face of that . . .well, of course God smote them!”

The Israelites were fools for complaining, no question about it.  Yet I complain all the time and my church is full of complainers and grumblers despite provision and miracles.  Why isn’t the earth opening between our feet?

Is God full of wrath and Jesus has Him in an eternal headlock?

Or is He Love always? With no shadow of turning?  Always the same, never changing? Is His will truly that none should perish?

Because if that is His will now, then it was His will then.  He doesn’t change.  So why wasn’t He more gracious?

A snapshot of me giving birth is just as much me as my professional photo.  If you only have the birthing photo, your impression of me will be vastly different from the one who has the professional photo.  But if you have both, you get a better picture of me.

I have a photo of me right after my third child was born and I wasn’t cute. I was swollen, my belly looked like I hadn’t given birth at all, the lighting was bad, and my hair was unbrushed.

Its a wretched picture of me.  Wretched. And it’s on my husband’s Facebook page.  The dear.

Even so, I don’t have him take it down because I like it.  It captures a tremendous part of me – I birth babies. More than that, circumstances said that two children were all I was going to have, despite wanting a large family.  Then I had a third.  Then a fourth.

For me, that picture shows that I am a woman that God grants dreams to.  He lets me birth the dreams in my own body.

So what if I look gross.

So what if God looks mean.

The issue is not about what is happening at that moment. 

The issue is what purpose that moment is a part of.

In birth, I am intensely focused.  If a nurse poked me at that moment and asked me to sign something for billing purposes, she’d have to recover that paperwork out of her you-know-what. I’m busy.  At that moment, you must be aligned with my purpose if you want anything from me.

The Israelites were not aligned with God’s purpose.  They were only looking at the moment, not the purpose the moment was a part of.

God was birthing a nation.  Not just Father, not just Holy Spirit, not just Jesus, all of Him.

The Triune God, the Beginning and the End, was intent, fiercely intent, on setting the stage for a holy nation.

He had mankind in mind. He had the promise of a Deliverer in mind.  He was remembering the pain of sealing up the gate to the Garden. He was creating a river of generational blessings that would flow over the earth.

You wouldn’t bug me about dinner as I’m birthing a child.

Wrong timing.

The Israelites vainly complained about their (mis)perceived lack as God is trying to set the stage for the redemption of mankind.

Wrong timing.

Not being in tune with God’s panoramic purpose brings consequences.  Only with a panoramic perspective can you truly understand the moment.

It lets you see that Love has teeth.

The Church gets away with so much more than the Israelites did because of this astonishing grace we live in.  We are worthy of destruction.  Instead, Jesus was destroyed for us.

Seems ugly, doesn’t it?  Love tortured and abandoned His Son, turning His back at the moment of His greatest need.   The Cross was so much more than just the moment of crucifixion. We get that.  This is a panoramic view we are well-trained in.

Can we get that in our individual moments?  Can we perceive God’s purpose beyond our needs or pain?

His purpose is humanity.

Your moments are within that purpose.

What would happen if we were in tune with His purpose?