"I am the Lord...who teaches thee to profit, who leads thee by the way that thou should go. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then thy peace would have been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea...There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." Isaiah 48:17-19, 22
"Every good and perfect gift is from above..." James 1:17
The heart of man will ever sick to satisfy itself, and ever and again it will tumble into every side eddy and distraction under the sun. We must learn: there is no such thing as peace and happiness outside of God. All joys are joyous because they point unto Him. Taken for themselves apart from Him, they become hollow and empty, and no wonder. Nothing that is good can stay good when it is separated from the Good; nothing that is joyous can stay joyous and apart from Joy.
"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!" The directions and decrees of God are not the limitations of a tyrant; they are a map for those lost in the woods, a map that leads them to the Good, i.e., Himself. To be "free" (so called) from His direction is to remain lost, and lostness is most assuredly not freedom--there is nothing "free" about being caged forever in confusion and chaos. However, to be loosed from that cage, to be set on the pathway out of the woods, the pathway that finally leads home, that is the only freedom that deserves to be called such, they only good and joy that there is, for such freedom is from God and leads us to God.
"Only Light of the world,
Source of all Joy:
Light up the pathways,
Lead wandering hearts to You,
Lead all the wanderers Home..."
-Jon Vowell
"Every good and perfect gift is from above..." James 1:17
The heart of man will ever sick to satisfy itself, and ever and again it will tumble into every side eddy and distraction under the sun. We must learn: there is no such thing as peace and happiness outside of God. All joys are joyous because they point unto Him. Taken for themselves apart from Him, they become hollow and empty, and no wonder. Nothing that is good can stay good when it is separated from the Good; nothing that is joyous can stay joyous and apart from Joy.
"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!" The directions and decrees of God are not the limitations of a tyrant; they are a map for those lost in the woods, a map that leads them to the Good, i.e., Himself. To be "free" (so called) from His direction is to remain lost, and lostness is most assuredly not freedom--there is nothing "free" about being caged forever in confusion and chaos. However, to be loosed from that cage, to be set on the pathway out of the woods, the pathway that finally leads home, that is the only freedom that deserves to be called such, they only good and joy that there is, for such freedom is from God and leads us to God.
"Only Light of the world,
Source of all Joy:
Light up the pathways,
Lead wandering hearts to You,
Lead all the wanderers Home..."
-Jon Vowell
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