Editor’s note: As Loma Linda University Health continues a massive construction project to build the new Medical Center and Children’s Hospital towers, the chaplains invite members of the campus to pray and fast each Tuesday, asking for God’s guidance and wisdom as we continue to grow. Below is a devotional from a series in News of the Week based on the biblical book of Nehemiah, in which Nehemiah faced a massive building project of his own.
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“They refused to obey and did not remember the miracles you had done for them. Instead, they became stubborn and appointed a leader to take them back to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God of forgiveness, gracious and merciful, slow to become angry, and rich in unfailing love. You did not abandon them …” –Nehemiah 9:17
In our passage today, Nehemiah proclaims that God gives unfailing love. Unfailing. How are we even supposed to conceive of what that is and what it would feel like to be loved like that? Things fail us all the time in our lives. It may be our relationships, our dreams, our best efforts, our plans — as well thought out as they may be. Even our ever-present technology that we depend on to work and communicate glitches at the most pressing and inopportune times.
What happens when these key components of our lives let us down? We do everything that is within our power to prevent it from ever happening again! We make back up plans. We make back ups for our back up plans! We avoid things and people that might fail us and let us down. We steel ourselves for the “inevitable” by building up walls in our minds and our hearts that will keep the pain and the hurt and the disappointment at bay … but it doesn’t work.
At our core, we still feel these things. Gradually the walls that we built to protect us turn into walls that imprison us. If all of the things that we see, hear and touch can potentially fail us, how in the world can we trust a God who we cannot see? Two thoughts. The first is that the statement that we cannot see God is not true. Perhaps it is because we aren’t looking at Him correctly. Or maybe what we are looking for is the problem.
Throughout Scripture, we are promised that we can see Him in the intricacies and interactions of the created world around us. Do we stay still enough and attentive enough to see? We are promised that we will see and hear Him in the words of His Word — the Bible. Do we tilt our ears to hear what they say to our heads and hearts? Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” He also applied that to those who follow Him. How we love and live with those around us shows them the God they seek to see.
Second thought. We cannot see and hear and experience God’s unfailing love and grace and mercy and forgiveness unless we open ourselves up to it. Jesus is inviting you to give Him a chance. “Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends.” (Revelation 3:20)
So how do these things live and breathe in the space you are in at Loma Linda University Health? Are you willing to give God a chance? Will you open the door just a crack and give it a try? Are you willing to make this a place of trust, forgiveness, mercy and grace by extending those things to your office, your class, your patients, your customers, your students, yourself? When you’ve been loved, you love back.
Terry Swenson, DMin
Campus chaplain
Loma Linda University