A Better Place

"If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. "
Genesis 1:7

"cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow's cause."
Isaiah 1:16b-17

So in the last blog post, I wrote about two different verses. And it is reasonable to say that they both connect and flow like a story.

The first verse was of Cain. We see what sin wants to do and what God says we must do.

The second verse was of Israel. We see what sin does when it gets in the house.

Isaiah writes about how messed up Israel is because it let the sin inside. But then he changes and kind of says, "Now that the sin is inside, stop and do good." And then he gives us examples of how to do good and what good looks like.

Now this verse in Hebrews has been on my mind. It seems that stopping one action and doing the opposite is one of the toughest moments of the fight. There's always that human nature to look back at where you've come from and how things used to be... nostalgia. Everything looks prettier when we look back at it. And Paul writes about Abraham's journey. Abraham believed that there was a better place than where he was. So he headed off in this direction of the better place even though he didn't know exactly where it was. He hadn't heard of it before. He hadn't seen it before. He didn't have family there. But he moved in faith in the direction of his belief of a better place. But it says that had he wanted to go back to where he came from, he would have had the opportunity. But he didn't look back.

I think sometimes that we are not "what we've done" or "where we've been" but rather we are where we are heading. The hope we have in Christ is that there is Grace for what we have done and where we have been. And there is the Promise that there is a better place and a better way. In between the two, we have moments of decisions... accept the grace and move forward toward something better? or stay in our old house where we know what it looks like and what it feels like and what it smells like and what it tastes like. Even though we've tasted its bitterness, the nostalgia of its sweetness beckons us back.

"If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city."
Hebrews 11:15-16