Daily devotion

April 16, 2006

Psa 119:122 KJV Be surety for thy servant for good: let not the proud oppress me.

The following is a true story. It is about a family who made a “heart adoption” of a teenage girl.  Her mom was a drug addict who had had many boy friends, some of whom had abused her other sisters. In the course of her fourteen years, this girl had never enjoyed the safe environment of a stable family life. In order to protect herself, she became extremely bossy, possessive--mean.  Due to lack of parenting these attitudes stayed unchecked for a long time,  and she therefore developed hard behaviors which made it difficult for people to care for her. She went from foster home to foster home, from state facility to state facility.  She was finally taken into this family with a boy 3 three years younger than her, and it was not long until her mean insecure behavior unleashed on the poor boy.  At this point it is important to say here that this family had made the decision to take this trouble teenage girl into their lives and home with the boy, who voluntarily agreed to share his parents out of compassion for her, and out of gratitude for what he had.

In spite of the constant rude meanness of the girl towards him, he showed a remarkable ability to love.  He would even feel bad for her when she was corrected for hurting him.  He constantly wanted to include her, when she mostly tried to exclude him. Eventually, his parents saw that his naturally jovial and happy attitude was starting to suffer.  He was starting to become angry, vengeful and discouraged, but due to his compassion for her, he could not find it within himself to retaliate.  It was time for the parents to intervene and they began to pay closer attention to the proud remarks that were lashed at him.  They started to actively defend him from the “oppression of the proud”, making sure that he was safe from her unloving attitudes. And in turn, this exposure of the proud remarks sparked a change in the teenage girl.  

Such it is between God and us.  When God sees that in spite of our hurt, in spite of our pain due to the oppression from the proud we do not try to retaliate to avenge ourselves, He Himself comes to our rescue; He becomes our avenger.  Our command from Him is to love one another (John 13:34), to put our love in action (Jam 2:26), to preach the Gospel (Mk 16:15), to forgive evil done against us (Mat 6:15), to give above and beyond what is required of us (Mat 5:42), and to let Him take care of vengeance (Rom 12:19).  No matter what happens to us in life, let us try not to avenge ourselves, but rather stay faithful to the commandments He gave us, while allowing him to be our standard and a shield from the oppression of the proud.  

Rom 12:19 KJV  Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.    

Patrick Lumbroso
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