Fish and God

June 3, 2020
 
You can look forward to each new day. Why? Because the past is behind you and God is beside you. When you start each day, take the words of Joshua 1:9 and personalize them: “I am strong and courageous.” You’re walking into work: “I can face anything. I will not be anxious or afraid; I will not get discouraged, for the Lord my God will be with me wherever I go.”
The past is behind you and God is beside you. Remember the famous words from the Christmas story? “They will call Him Immanuel – which means, ‘God With Us.’”
In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey talks about when he was a teenager and it finally dawned on him what an awesome thing it was that God is with us. He said he learned about God when he kept an aquarium. Management of an aquarium, he discovered, is no easy task. He had to monitor the nitrate levels and ammonia content. He pumped in vitamins and antibiotics. He filtered the water through glass fibers and charcoal, and exposed it to ultraviolet light.
“You would think,” he writes, “in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank, they dove for cover. They showed me only one emotion: fear. Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign that I was there to hurt them. I could not convince them that I was watching over them and caring for them. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible.
“And then it dawned on me: Those fish will never comprehend my actions. In order to be understood by them I would have to become one of them. I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
And that is just what God did. That’s what the Bible says. The Bible says God is big and powerful and beyond our comprehension. So He became one of us. He lived among us and spoke a language we could understand. Now He has promised He will never leave us. Put the past behind you and God beside you.

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