Finding (or Creating) Meaning

I was reminded today of the hopelessness that we face when we try to understand life apart from God. As I searched the Scriptures for something to share with my family this morning, I turned to 2 Peter 1:20-21. For ease, the NIV puts it as so: "20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." By itself, you might say "So what?" Lately, however, I've been having a curiosity for prophetic Scripture. Do you see where the point is going to be yet?

A couple of times recently I opened to Ezekiel chapter 24. I assumed that the passage must somehow relate to me on a more personal level than as a prophecy spoken through Ezekiel to the remnant of Israel that was about to be destroyed as the Babylonians laid seige to Jerusalem. In my self-centeredness I assumed that the Spirit led me to this passage to explain a parallel in my life. So I started trying to draw connections and conclusions. Aha, with my problem-solving abilities given by the Lord, I figured it out -- I, like the prophet Ezekiel, was going to lose something precious to me. Like Ezekiel, it would be as a sign to the rebellious. Like Ezekiel, I was forbade to mourn. And it would be used to show that He alone is the Lord. How marvelous are the ways the Lord chooses to work!

I would like to think that I wasn't actually as prideful in my thoughts as I just portrayed. But that's basically the way that I interpreted the events in my life recently combined with that Scripture. Thankfully, then God gave me a little wakeup call with 2 Peter 1. Interpretation isn't by the will of man. I was looking for an interpretation, for a way to make sense of things. I found something that sounded good in my own mind. I was blind to see that it was the product of my own thinking and reasoning, however. And that happens far too often. We look for meaning; we look to understand the world and events around us. We assume that once we find a plausible answer, especially if it fits well with our belief system, that we found truth. Too often we assume that anything supernatural, if not overtly evil, must be divine. We only look for truth as far as it directly concerns us and as far as it can provide us with an answer that we are willing to accept.

What is the Lord telling us that we are choosing not to accept? Do we not see this as denying Christ, who, with the Father, is sovereign over all creation? What interpretation, what meaning, what answers are we assuming to be truth? What in our beliefs, in our lives, is vanity? What needs to be torn away and burned in the fire? To what are we clinging instead of Christ? It's time to allow every part of our lives to be threshed by the Lord. We, too, have been a part of the harvest. Now it's time to be purified, for the chaff to be removed from the grain.