I laughed out loud at a meme a friend posted today detailing how Austria’s airport has an entire help desk dedicated to travelers who land in Austria thinking they were flying to Australia. Apparently so many people make this mistake, they need personnel on hand 24/7 to handle them! Come to find out, this is all a big joke, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
While I was laughing at my gullibility, I remembered an actual geography mistake I made just last night. My husband and I were watching a scene from a movie that took place in the General Assembly room at the United Nations. As the character leaned on one of the country’s desks, I noticed the signs for “Niger” and “Nigeria” nearby. All my life I thought Niger and Nigeria were one country. I just assumed when people referred to “Niger,” it was a colloquial way of saying “Nigeria.” Kind of like when we say we’re from the United States, the U.S., and America—all meaning the same country. I felt pretty ignorant.
I’ve been thinking about assumptions, and the trouble in which they often land us. Few things can make us feel stupid quicker than an openly shared, wrong assumption. The Jewish people confronted this with regard to Jesus. Assuming their promised Messiah would come as a powerful King for the nation of Israel, they struggled to believe the healer, teacher, and servant walking among them, named Jesus, could be the one they’d waited so many years to deliver them.
We make a lot of assumptions about God, too … what He thinks, how He operates (or doesn’t operate) in the world, what His plans are, and more. When it comes to our Heavenly Father, though, there’s not much we need to assume. When God sent His son to earth—part divine and part human—it was not solely for the purpose of the world’s redemption. God also wanted to reveal His nature through the character of Jesus.
Let me say that another way. If we want to know who God really is, we should look at His son, Jesus. If want to know how God wants us to live our lives, we should look at the way He lived His.
I believe our human nature really wants to complicate things. We look for details, hard and fast rules, catch-22s, and all other means of confusing pretty simple instructions. The Bible is a narrative—the world’s most beautiful story—detailing God’s perfect, divine, holy love for His creation. It’s a tale of just how endless and vast our Heavenly Father’s love for us is. And He wrapped that story up in the man called Jesus, who walked the earth with human problems and frailties, and showed us exactly how He wants us to live.
Love God. Love others. Live like Jesus.
We can be ultimately assured of these things. No assumptions needed.
ASSUREDLY His,
Nicki
For more on how to #livelikejesus, keep an eye out for my social media posts with that hashtag, relating to the book I am currently writing.
Expressively HIS ... 