STARTING SOMETHING

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.

Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says, “I was only joking!”

Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down.

As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.

Proverbs 26:17-21   

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Are you into logical sequences?

We use them all the time, you know.

Now I’m not saying we are all charter members of the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Solvers Club but we have all been given the ability to deduce, to figure out things using a sense of logic, reason, and good old common sense.

Given this, I present to you a logical sequence regarding our potential as human beings. It goes and flows something like this:

God creates all men and women. With this all men and women have His goodness within them. All men and women descend from the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, who were created perfectly good but chose to disobey God in the garden and corrupted their perfection with sin. Thus all men and women conceived and created afterwards became afflicted with sin. With this, all men and women are sinners and do wrong in the sight of their creator God in His sight while living on the earth He created and placed them on. Therefore, all men and women have the potential to do good or evil.

It’s true, isn’t it?

Even the best person you know can do something wrong that leaves us surprised when we shouldn’t be. We are a flawed and broken people living amongst one another in a world of brokenness. And in the midst of all this is a God who seeks to correct our problem and place our sin afflictions into remission as He guides us to righteousness and away from wickedness. Our world could be a better place if everyone would simply just believe in God and Jesus, His Son, who walked this earth like us to show us the right way to live before saving us through His willingness to die on the cross and pay the price for the our sins. Jesus, who had no sin within Him, chose to become sin, serving as a living sacrifice to reconcile all mankind with God before rising in power and glory and majesty to be with His Father in heaven. In Jesus, we have life and hope now and forevermore. All we have to do is place our faith and trust fully in Him and the God who sent Him out of His love for us (John 3:16).

Unfortunately, the reality is that an ever growing majority of the world is choosing to live their lives void of the Creator and Savior, choosing to allow sin to abide in equal measure to their goodness or even exceeding it.

When we live in this way, willingly apart from God then we can become people of discord and strife, components of our brokenness and sinfulness. In deciding to turn our backs on the Prince of peace, the One who would lead us to a sense of love and peace with one another, we instead find the evil one Satan influencing our behavior and nothing good ever comes from that.

What forms of dissension can Satan create through us? We need only look at our proverbs for today to see how we are often led to start something in our dealings with others. Let’s review our verses one by one and see what God’s word is saying to us on this matter:

1. Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own. Proverbs 26:17

There really never a reason to grab a stray dog anywhere except to maybe love them and give them a home. To grab any dog by the ears would provoke them to defend themselves and produce a bark or even a bite. In other words, involving yourself with something or someone when you have no business doing it, can produce issues that never had to happen. Many people have decided to jump into a dispute even though they were never originally included in it only to find themselves caught up in the melee and often injured in the process. They started something by getting involved with something that wasn’t their matter to get involved in.

2. Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” Proverbs 26:18-19

In our sinfulness, we can act maliciously and deviously sometimes often with terrible consequence that was unintended. Often that malicious, devious behavior involves deception and dishonesty. In this proverb, Solomon asserts that engaging in this kind of behavior against our neighbor is akin to a maniac firing flaming arrows of death. In other words, when a flaming arrow of death finds its target, it’s going to do its damage and that damage is irreparable just as the damage done to your neighbor when they find out about your trickery. Nothing the perpetrator can say will heal what they started when they chose to sin against their neighbor.

3. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife. Proverbs 26:21

Some people just like to start arguments. I can’t explain why except they revel in creating strife in their relationships with others. They love to place some charcoal on the embers of any brewing disagreement to start a fire of dispute and as soon as the argument breaks out, they are rarely ready to stop it at anytime, choosing rather to throw another piece of wood or two on the fire to sustain its burning and keep the quarrel going.

You’ve seen this, right? I know I have and even in my own family to the point where I wonder when it’s ever going to just stop. When will someone choose to stop fueling the fire of disagreement? This question leads us to the final proverb in today’s devotion. Let’s look at it now.

4. Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down. Proverbs 26:20

Start a rumor and you start a fire raging against someone. Enter into a rumor mill already started and you will only fan the flames of the fire someone else started. Refuse to do either and you can either keep the fire from starting at all or put the fire out altogether just as a fire will go out without wood to keep it going.

In this, we see that we have a choice when it comes to the way we relate to one another. We can choose to start dissension or we can choose to promote peace and love. The first only continues to break what is already broken. The latter begins to heal our brokenness and lead us on the path of resolution and reconciliation and harmony.

We all have the potential to be good or evil. My prayer is that you will allow the Lord to always guide you in the ways of goodness and righteousness so that everything you start will be edifying and a blessing to those you associate with.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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