That God wants us to live practically is clear from Scripture – in general satisfaction with human experience during our earth sojourn. Issues of health, family, work, aspiration, orientation (physical and/or spiritual) are addressed with implications of blessings (affirmatives) and curses (negatives) as part of the course for daily living – the Ebals and Gerizims of life. From Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, Israel’s tribes shouted blessings and curses, and with acknowledgments between them of what it was that each had shouted. (Deuteronomy 27:11-47) It was the end time for Moses. On the conclusion of that event, he died.
The extent and balance of these inevitable life accompaniments (affirmative and negative factors) are interpreted differently. They are neutral in themselves, but become helpful or crippling in the manner in which we receive and manage them. Poorly managed a blessing can become a terrible cursing in its management. I have read several accounts of persons having gained wealth by inheritance, lottery, or even personal industry, persons who have wasted the intended blessing in folly, in negative personal orientation, or even in efforts that seemed to have promise for greater financial rewards, perhaps generated by new found greed. Regarding negatives – a forest fire rightly treated led to a new and more beautiful blessing than formerly. More than fifty years before this writing a forest fire east of Spokane, Washington defaced the area. Today that area is more beautiful than it was before the fire, a fire we all deplored at the time. In nature there is a rule that there is sometimes wounding that leads to healing. It is paradox that heaven uses in the lives of persons, devout or secular, to minister to the benefit of mankind. The procedure was followed in the wounding and death of the Savior for the purpose of mankind’s redemption. Christians seldom think of the horror of Calvary as a blessing even when they are grateful for the affirmation. In a parallel story closing the Bible’s Genesis, we read about the mistreatment of Joseph by his brothers in an immoral and criminal act which, when played out, became blessing. Joseph persuaded his brothers that: God did send me before you to preserve life. (Genesis 45:5) Calvary was a human curse that, under God redeems those who embrace meaning for the negatives of life. God adapts all matters to direct humanity.
There is an end time for every person. Large interest relates to the end time for nature when the follies of mankind, the end of resources, and the destruction of the planet caused by attacks from several directions, including the plan of God. We speculate widely even to the time of occurrences. Science describes some of it in the light of nature’s evidence, and Scripture prophecies in the will of God and blessed denouement of it all. Cursing in God’s story is victory for those who follow his plan. Apparently all the others end in a whimper of silence, death and darkness. Since the time of the end is unknown we are left to either guess and accept or disregard matters. The guesses are many. Sensing God’s grace, knowing that I can mean so little to any other scenarios I have read (including from the Bible), my concern is wrapped up in the human package of my own life ending. That is really the important end-time. All the other information is for me to be prepared for my own end of natural life. In preparation the mercy of God is at work to protect, guide, comfort, even carry those who accept and follow the plan of God to an acceptable and blessed end of individual life. We are instructed to live in a context of soul comfort that God’s care and blessing for his children is quite enough to carry through in the divine hope related to life. Isaiah 40:1 is a magnificent, even if truncated, verse in the Bible: Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. The verse is as meaningful today as the day in which the inspired Isaiah wrote it down. As this is being written in 2014, there are terror and war sites around the world (46 were noted the other day) in which civilians, even children, are being killed and property destroyed; hatreds abound, even among persons of the same faith and nationalities; diseases are threatening pandemics, with Ebola and flu among the current fears; governments are stalled and politicized, trying to skirt additional armed conflicts; economies are infected with recessions; and, the story lengthens in this negative vein. When persons ask me about the curses my response is straightforward: It has always been so. In God there is personal comfort in all. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020