December 23: Of Hitting or Missing the Mark

Zecharaiah 4:1-5:11

Revelation 14:1-20

Psalm 142:1-7

Proverbs 30:21-23

"...There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name."  This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep His commands and remain faithful to Jesus.

- Revelation 14:11-12

The Book of Revelation has always been a tough one for me.  When I read it, I find myself missing the forest for the trees quite a bit.  I focus on trying to understand the significance of numbers and symbols and characters, rather than on what God is trying to teach me.  I was reading the NT scripture, and the verse above caught my attention.  As I stopped to read it over, and then a third time, I got a glimpse of the forest.  

I don't believe many people start the day determined to "worship the beast and its image".  But sin is "missing the mark".  That suggests specific target, focus and direction. There is one mark.  To hit anything else, to aim at anything else, is to fail.  The mark is God - acknowledging Him, knowing Him, loving Him and submitting to Him.  But why should we?  I think it's because, apart from the key purpose - to love Him and be united with Him - God has permitted us certain needs and desires in our heart.  Those needs and desires take many forms - from food, clothing, shelter and relationship, to money, power and popularity.  I believe that ultimately, however, those needs all converge at one point: a better life for ourselves, and for those we love.  And I believe that the satisfaction of those needs and desires, and the ease with which they are satisfied, is determined by whether or not we hit the mark.  

For the first 12 years of my daughter's life, I worked my hindquarters off, in hopes of building a good life for her, her brothers and their mom, one I equated with material abundance and financial security.  I was constantly traveling, constantly exhausted - and constantly absent.  Not having surrendered the decision to God, I had no way of realizing my good intentions were leaving my kids without a father, and my wife without a husband - all in pursuit of a life I had no reason to believe was going to be THE good life for them.  I was missing the mark, and so there was no rest, day or night, for me.

How then to approach things?  We get great guidance in today's OT reading.  In Zecharaiah 4:6 we read that the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel is "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit".  One of the greatest temptations is to think it IS by our might, our power, our intellect, our hard work, our resources, our relationships, our whatever-it-is.  When we depend on that, we miss the mark, and we sin, and we make things so much harder for ourselves.  

Lord, as we celebrate the birth of Your Son, in the humblest of surroundings and the most threatening of environments (Caesar Augustus wasn't going to tolerate a claimant to his throne, was he?) remind us of the completeness of our helplessness and our dependence on You.  Help us to make the best use of our effort, by focusing on You.