What God Wants You to Remember When Life Feels Unreasonable
By: Meg Bucher
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8
“Doesn’t this seem a little unreasonable?”
The eye-roll emojis that followed indicated my daughter’s begrudging compliance to my rules. Under a fresh dousing of unreasonable hormones, an inquisitive switch flipped, begging her to ask why things must be the way I say they must be. In mood-driven moments, my advice seems archaic and inapplicable to her very relevant tween life.
“Stop."
My direct response communicated my firm stance in regard to her demand for an explanation. I’m the parent. I’m not required to present my case. Thirty minutes of daily screen-time literally pains her, but she will someday appreciate conversation-filled commutes.
Life bumps up daily with unfair rules, unstoppable injustice, and painful circumstances. We can be tempted to ask God, “Doesn’t this seem a little unreasonable?”
Echoing the prophets before him, Micah called God’s people back the behavior He had always required of them: “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God,” To live life in this manner was not unreasonable then, nor is it now. Today, these basic behaviors allow societies to survive and communities to thrive.
God laid down a lot of laws in the Old Testament, well aware His people would fail and fall short of them. They struggled with rebellion. The rush to repair their relationship with God through legalistic solutions repetitively proved to be futile. Love ignites God’s purposes. Created in His image, God loves His people unexplainably. So much, He sent His only Son Jesus to die sacrificially for their - and our - lack of compliance to His protective laws.
God, in His mercy, made a way for His people (and us): Jesus. (John 14:1) Christ taught, in Matthew 22:37-40: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Life isn’t fair, just, or pain-free. What are we supposed to do with that?
God seems quiet sometimes. He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to. It’s hard to understand how He is making good of all the bad things happening in the world.
When the world seems unreasonable, remember God’s truth.“For we are his workmanship,” Ephesians 2:10 reminds, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” As believers, we answer the world’s insanity and injustice with the love of Christ in us. The Voice paraphrase of Micah 6:8 says: “He has told you, mortals, what is good in His sight.”
My daughter doesn’t have to understand my rules. She may never fully agree with the standards I’ve placed upon her, but she trusts my unconditional love for her. We are unconditionally loved by the Creator of the Universe. We can’t follow His rules perfectly. We will continue to sin. But He has made a way, through Jesus, for us to be with Him anyway. We don’t reject our children when they fail to follow our rules. Nor, does God! In Christ, we confess, repent and keep living life in pursuit of justice, kindness and love.
Meg Bucher writes about everyday life within the love of Christ as an author, freelance writer and blogger at Sunny&80. Her first book, “Friends with Everyone,” is available on amazon.com. She earned a Marketing/PR degree from Ashland University, but stepped out of the business world to stay at home and raise her two daughters. Besides writing, she leads a Bible Study for Women and serves as a Youth Ministry leader in her community. She lives in Northern Ohio with her husband, Jim, and two daughters.
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