…about replaceability

At the end of July I had a bout of strep throat.  As I was spending the evening hours in my usual pursuit of waiting for sleep and thinking, I began to think about mortality and replaceability.  Every job I have ever had, I knew that anyone could be trained to replace me.  I know people in South Carolina who were glad to see me leave and others who genuinely miss me.  We all have loved ones who have passed away and we miss them but life goes on.  People are fickle and fallible.

But God is immutable - ever the same, constant and unchanging.  God never replaces one of His children.  He creates and saves them with purpose and to fulfill a purpose.  When - and only when - that purpose is completed, He takes us home to be with Him forever!

I have heard many people over the years say that if God tells you to do something and you disobey, He will find someone else to do that task.  I don’t believe that is true.  I do not see it in the Bible.  I invite you to read Hebrews 11, the chapter often called the “Hero’s of the Faith.”  Then go back to the Old Testament and read the stories of those people’s lives.  Not one of them didn’t at some point fail, miss an opportunity or outright disobey God!  Even Enoch, whom we have so little information about, being human, must have messed up at some time - look what God did for him!  And yet, they are cited as examples of exemplary faith; faith to emulate.

God is sovereign!  He has chosen and all whom He has chosen will be saved.  He has graciously given each one He saves the job of sharing that good news.

“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;” (Psalms 107:2)

It is still God who does the saving!

The fact that I am irreplaceable to God is not, and can never be, a source of pride for me but rather, a source of relief and comfort.