[image:Colors, 2013, JA Van Devender]
Location: Gunpowder River, vicinity of Bel Air, MD.
1 Chronicles 29:1 (NKJV)
29 Furthermore King David said to all the assembly: “My son Solomon, whom alone God has chosen, is young and inexperienced; and the work is great, because the temple is not for man but for the Lord God.
Have you ever intentionally "blurred" your eyes so that the images in your field of view "run together?" I may be a bit strange in this way (also), but I do that on occasion. There is something "abstract" in seeing the colors soften and the hard edges blur and the prevailing hue move in one direction or the other.
Sometimes, I suppose, we have to not see clearly in order to see differently. This I think describes the effect of "impressions." That brand of art we call "impressionism" has great appeal to me for this very reason.
Impressions are important. Impressions give us our "over all" assessment of experience, whether it is of people we encounter or places we visit or the results of actions. Interestingly we say that such impressions "color" our perception of people or things or whatever... they form a prevailing tone that may govern much of our resulting conversation or interaction with others. Quite often these "impressions" are not very clearly articulated or consciously understood... they just "are."
These impressions can help or hurt... and they often do. Sometimes our impressions only change after long experience with another person or familiarity with a tool or etc. Sometimes such experience deepens and confirms our initial impression. The point is, they are always there.
David's "impression" of his son Solomon was that he was "young and inexperienced", which was undoubtedly true. He saw that the work of building a magnificent temple as "great"... which is as large an understatement as I can imagine. I think that David was a bit "put off" that God was not allowing him to build it. Like Moses viewing, with nostalgic longing, the promised land from afar but not permitted to enter into it, so David saw that the fruit of his labors, in one sense, was to be harvested by another. David was old... Solomon was young and vigorous but inexperienced and David knew all about the types of trials and testing that lay in his future.
But David also knew this... God alone had chosen Solomon for the work... and therefore, despite his fears, resentment, concerns, or whatever, David had prepared things for him as best he could. Massive stores were compiled and the people were instructed to get behind him and "make it happen."
I think that we can learn a lesson about living with each other from this. Whether it is marriages or family relations or especially in viewing our fellow Christians in our home church, we should recognize that "impressions" must not be allowed to control our relational interaction with folks beyond their due bounds. We need to recognize that God has "chosen" our relationships in these things through His providential guidance of our birth, our acquaintances, and especially of our covenant bonding in such things as marriage and church fellowship. This means that perseverance in relationships requires us to look for God's hand at work in us and in the other person to reveal the depths of His wisdom in joining us together.
Sometimes these relationships can be a bit rocky... not every positionally sanctified individual has progressed very far in their progressive sanctification. Yet the command to love each other is in this very situation the call to that obedience which will most glorify the Lord and provide the most astonishing witness to His power. Like those who heard David we must look to the Lord and trust Him to know what He is doing when He sets aside an individual as one with whom we are to have a covenant relation. Our impressions of this individual must be not be fixed... they must be allowed to develop.... We often have to intentionally blur what we see in him or her, causing the sharp lines to soften and the overall perspective to provide a controlling hue. We have to see this individual through the lens of God's sovereign wisdom and then bend our will to further His work by adapting ourselves to the process.
lmpressions are important... we all have them... what we need to do is work through them in order to discover where they are true or not. At all events we must not allow them to hinder the work that God is doing in whatever circumstance our impressions are influencing.
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