Monday, November 26, 2007

• ..as surely as the Lord lives.

   

  it always struck me as i read the Word of God that when someone made an oath, or was trying to emphasize the gravity of the truth of a situation, or was trying to express how passionately certain he was, that was what he said---

   

  ..as surely as the Lord lives..

   

  granted, in the past, i used to think of it simply as a manner of speech... like one of those by-phrases embedded in the language of almost any culture; something made null because of the commonality of usage. let me see if i can think of some--

  i swear..

  cross my heart on this..

  it seems often these phrases go only as far as the self.
  i suppose, indeed, in many societies of today,
  the self is as sure as it gets. 
  
  sometimes i take what follows these words as with certainty...
  other times, i hardly give it any seriousness.
  it depends, really, on who is saying it.

   

  but

   

  "as surely as the Lord lives."

   

  ..now that has an effect of gripping my attention.

  on two levels...

  
  the first, being that the Lord is true. the Lord is certain. there is nothing more certain and steadfast than He is. and the second, on top of the first, is that amongst the peoples of the Bible times, there existed an atmosphere of that very thing: that God is, that He lives! what a thing to live in times such as those, when people take you seriously when you speak in the name of the Lord, or that the only thing that can match the speaker's sureness of whatever it is he is saying, ...is the sureness of God. that is the yardstick; that being the thing against which the things in this earth or on our hearts is matched up against. and this is true.

   

  i am sure that the Lord lives.

   

  and as surely as the Lord lives,

  Lord, i am Thine.

   

  • 10:38 PM
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