The Habitual Heart - B
Soul Snack 134/11 ... The Habitual Heart - B
Commanding each day are tiny seasons. There is the season of rest, the season for eating, the season for activity and so the day transpires. Throughout the day, the week, the month and then the year they capture life. A season may be the millisecond of a blink or a millennium of 4000 generations. Years become decades and the decades become centuries but seasonal cycles always remain.
The Israelites were well acquainted with seasons of rituals - they were diligently empty at the seeking of God.
For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. (Is 58:2)
However God enters debate with His own when they challenge His blindness to them:
'Why have we fasted,' they say,'and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?' ... Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. (Is 58:3)
God has correctly explained that devotion to Him is not seasonal - it is not just one day per week.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself?(Is 58:5a)
Devotion is a permanent twenty-four hour activity, it comes from the pursuit of righteousness, for it is righteousness that God will respond to - not ritual.
Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; (Is 51:1)
What I see is only found by where I look. What is in my heart is always expressed by what is in my habit.
Today's Soul Snippet:
Jesus died for relationship not ritual.