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"Hoke, you're the best friend I have."

      Miss Daisy learned that because we are blessed, it doesn't give us special privileges at the expense of denying them to others. We need to learn that. Because we have everything, we dare not always put ourselves, as Cain did, in the center of the picture.

      WHEN THINGS DON'T GO OUR WAY

      Now, a second lesson from the Cain and Abel story. When things don't go our way, we are too often quick to blame God. The lesson is in the mysterious story of God accepting Abel's offering but refusing Cain's.

      "Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground." The scripture says, "Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock" (Gen. 4:3-4). Then there is this stark word in verses four and five: "And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard."

      Both men were grateful to God and, at least on the surface, were bringing a fitting sacrificial gift. It's hardly any wonder that "Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell."

      Divorce yourself from that quick identification with Cain and think for a moment. Isn't it true that when God takes the liberty to do something that we do not understand and that we think goes against us, we are immediately ready with the question, "How can God do such a thing?"

      Think of Job. He believed it was right for the good to prosper and the wicked not to prosper. As long as God conformed to this favorite idea of his, to his conception of a moral world order, he was all right. But when God did something that did not fit into his system of convictions—when Job's children died, his house was burned down, and his flocks were destroyed—he not only withdrew into the sulking corner of his religious house of belief, he questioned God and the meaning of his own life, as would many of us.

      Job asked the same question most of us ask at one time or another: Why? At first he tried to keep a stiff upper lip when he said, "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (1:21). But after Satan was allowed to take Job's health away as well, he begins to cry out in chapter 3 and raise the question over and over: Why? "Why did I not die at birth, / come forth from the womb and expire? Why were there knees to receive me, or breasts for me to suck?" (Job 3:11-12).

      It's so with all of us, isn't it? Why should this happen to me? Why did God allow my wife to die so young? Why have my children turned their backs on the church and all I believe? Why is my friend caught in the tenacious clutches of drugs? We identify with what Alex Haley said about the turtle who found himself atop a six-foot fence post in a bean field: "He didn't get where he was all by himself." We know that about our situations. We didn't get here by ourselves, so we blame God.

      Cain, unable to understand why his gift is not accepted, stands before the altar of God with a doubting and rebellious heart. God is not acting according to his program. And so Cain reflects our own egotism and lack of trust. Though there is mystery here as to why God accepted Abel's offering but not Cain's, we are led to believe that God was looking on the heart, the attitude of the giver, rather than on the specifics of his offering.

      WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE TO GOD?

      In the way of money, it's not the amount but the spirit in which you give. And it also has something to do with proportion. That's the reason Jesus made the woman who gave pennies in the temple one of the most famous women in Scripture. She gave everything.

      But money is not all we can offer God on the altar. We can offer him our time and energy. We can give God our intentions. We need to be disciplined in our intentions.

      We will never be loving extensions of the ministry of Jesus until we become intentional about paying attention to people we meet daily, listening to them, giving them our time. The offering of our life will be acceptable to God only as we are intentional in making that offering daily.

      QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

      Are there circumstances or problems in your life for which you are tempted to blame God? What sin is lurking in your heart?

      What privileges are you blessed with? What gifts will you give to God today?

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      GOD KNOWS WHO I AM

       PSALM 8; ISAIAH 12

      Psalm 8 is one of my favorite psalms. When I'm feeling blue and lonely, when I become preoccupied with failure, and when depression threatens to turn the sky of my life into clouds of grey, I shower my mind with a portion of this psalm.

      When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

      the moon and stars that you have established;

      what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

      mortals that you care for them?

      Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

      and crowned them with glory and honor. (Ps. 8:3-5)

      It's a thrilling reminder that God knows who I am. And when I think that way, if I am alone, I shout "hallelujah." If I'm where I can't shout, I allow my inner self to sing with joy, otherwise I might explode.

      LIVING A HALLELUJAH LIFE

      Singing, shouting, celebrating—it's the response of anyone, especially Christians, when contemplating God's story. The psalms are songs—songs that express every mood and attitude of persons. The highs and the lows, the successes and the sorrows, the doubts and the disillusionments are all there. So you have pensive confession, desperate longing for God's presence, honest questioning of God's activity, helpless dependency on God's strength, abandonment of self to God's will and way—and punctuating it all are exclamations of joy.

      The coming of Jesus makes the singing more vibrant because we are now even more confident of God's character—his love and grace.

      No question about it, the religion of the psalmist is a religion that sings. Psalm 8 is a pristine example. It begins and ends with that exulting greeting, "O LORD, our Sovereign, / how majestic is your name in all the earth!" (vv. 1, 9).

      The postmodernists are right when they tell us that modernity—life based solely on science, rationality, and reason—has failed us. Researchers in physics and math are creating and making more space for wonder, imagination, mystery, and majesty. Science itself is discovering that while facts are important, facts alone are not enough either to explain or to experience the mystery and majesty of creation and this magnificent planet that is our dwelling place.

      Evolution and intelligent design theories will continue to be debated. They deal with the "how" questions. Faith asks "why" questions dealing with the meaning and purpose of it all, our place as human beings in the "great scheme of it all."

      Two of the best-known verses of Scripture are in this psalm. "O LORD, our Lord, / How excellent is Your name in all the earth" (v. l NKJV) and "What is man that You are mindful of him?" (v. 4 NKJV). Do you see it? It is only in the context of praising God, certainly only after praising him, that we can rightfully consider who we are. The psalmist places humanity within the vastness of God's creation. At first glance, that vastness highlights the smallness of humans. The motive of the psalmist is brilliant. He wants us to see God's immense care and concern for us, so he marvels, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, / mortals that you care for them?"

      Our marveling at the heavens, the work of God's fingers, might well be beyond that of the psalmist. We have far more data than was available to David's naked eye. We know that in one second a beam of light travels 186,000 miles, which is seven times greater than the distance around the earth. It takes eight minutes for that beam to go from the sun to the earth. That beam from sun to earth travels almost six trillion miles in a year. Scientists call this a light-year. It boggles the mind. Eight billion light-years from the earth is halfway to the edge of the known universe. There are a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars, on average, within the universe. There are perhaps as many planets as stars within all the galaxies—ten

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