“and even though my illness was a trial to you,
you did not treat me with contempt or scorn.
Instead,
you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God,
as if I were Christ Jesus himself.”
Galatians 4:4
Whatever the illness was that Paul had, it proved to
be a trial not only to him but also to the church in Galatia as well.
They, and he, persevered because of the treasured
message he carried.
Sometimes we are turned off by the messenger.
We treat with contempt or scorn the very ones who
carry the message of hope and redemption because of some external, temporal
discomfort they may present to us. The Galatian church, to their credit, did
not do this.
Could you imagine missing eternity because you couldn’t
get past your first impression of someone?
“Lord, I’m sorry – I didn’t know – I just couldn’t
take them seriously given the clothes they wore!” “...or the kind of music they
liked...” “or...”
Our superficial reasons for not listening could cause
us to miss an eternity with God.
Why would God allow this?
Listen to this passage from the Message translation:
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you
got called into this life.
I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among
you,
not many influential, not many from high-society
families.
Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and
women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these
“nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”?
That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by
with blowing your own horn before God.
Everything that we have—right thinking and right
living,
a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way
of Jesus Christ.
That’s why we have the saying,
“If you’re
going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
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