DAILY DEVOTIONAL – August 28, 2020
“Divine Disappointment”
Prayer: Our loving God and Father, as You tell us in Your Word, You know every hair on our head. You also know every one of our days. Lord Jesus, in our times of trouble, remind us in Your Word that You know exactly where we are and what we are going through, and that You alone truly understand what it means to hurt and suffer and face trials. You suffered perfectly in our place and rose again so that You could be with us, especially in our times of need. We entrust ourselves to You alone. Amen.
Scripture: Genesis 6:5-8
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Devotion: “Divine Disappointment”
Every baseball player dreams of making it to the majors, but to tie a Major League Baseball record within the first week of your career would be something really special. Chase Wright, a rookie pitcher for the New York Yankees, did just that in only his second game after being called up from a Double-A team—though probably not in the way he had hoped.
On April 22, 2007, Wright gave up a record-setting four (4) consecutive home runs to the Boston Red Sox, allowing the Red Sox to beat the Yankees with a clean sweep in their first meeting of the season. In doing so, Wright tied the record previously held by Paul Foytack, who gave up four consecutive homers in 1963.
The Yankee team manager at the time was Joe Torre. After the game Torre was interviewed. I’m am sure anyone that was watching the interview at the time would have fully expected him to criticize Wright for his historically poor performance. However, Torre said something unexpected. When asked what he thought about Wright’s pitching Joe said, “It’s just another piece of experience for that kid. It has nothing to do with what he’s going to be or what’s going to happen in the future. I still think he’s going to be special. He’s a pretty tough kid.”
While Torre’s confidence was certainly heartening to Wright, it wasn’t nearly as encouraging as the letter Wright received in the mail a few days later. The letter was from Paul Foytack, Wright’s partner in baseball infamy. Paul mailed Wright a letter of encouragement assuring Wright from his own experiences that this disappointment would only make him stronger. When the press found out about the letter they interviewed Foytack. When asked what caused him to write the letter, Foytack said, “He’s kind of young to be going through that. Hopefully, he’ll take the letter to heart.”
From a human perspective, there was only one other person on the planet who knew exactly how Chase felt, and that was Paul Foytack. Paul was the one person whose words of encouragement would mean the most to Chase.
I know I don’t have to ask this question to know the answer to it, but have you ever been where Chase Wright was before? Have you ever been under the dark cloud of disappointment? Of course you have. We all have. Why? Well, not to disappoint you, but we will experience disappointment because we are the source of disappointment; we all have chosen to go our own way from God. Actually, God put it a little more bluntly in our text from Genesis 6 didn’t He? “The wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” To say that God was disappointed is an understatement.
Now, Scripture here is clearly using adjectives for human emotion (or what is know as anthropomorphic language) in order to help us understand something like the heart and thoughts of God that are eternally beyond our full comprehension. God wasn’t disappointed in His performance in creating humanity like Chase Wright was disappointed in his pitching performance. No, God was grieved in His heart for the people He made in His image; that they used the life and freedom He graciously created them with to reject their Creator and destroy one another.
God is loving, and as such, He has promised to provide for our salvation and forgiveness since Adam and Eve’s first sin in the Garden of Eden – and God has stayed perfectly faithful to that promise in Christ. But in order for there to be forgiveness, sin had to be answered for. Our God is a righteous and holy God. A God of justice. If God were to have turned a blind eye to the fact that His holy word and commands had been disobeyed, if He would have simply pretended like sin never happened, He would not be a perfectly righteous God or worthy of our worship. God is loving, and God is a God of justice. Sin must be paid for and held accountable, and God told Adam and Eve before they sinned that the consequence of disobedience and sin would be death. The only way salvation comes is by the pure grace of God that Noah found, not that Noah had himself, but that he stumbled upon only because of God’s faithfulness to His promised Seed of Salvation that was still to come in Christ. So, as He did then by sending the floods and yet saving Noah and his family, God brought salvation to us by sending the flood of His wrath on Christ who bore our sins for us on the cross.
God’s love doesn’t just forgive and forget. God’s love forgives us, pays for our sins on the cross, rises again from the dead to give us new life and Christ remains with us in the Spirit of God every moment of every day in order to guide us, strengthen us and comfort us in those times we need it most.
Disappointment is an inescapable fact of life, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived this life perfectly for us, and who is with us, and who has promised to lead us and uphold us, knows more than we ever will what it means to be disappointed and heartbroken. Christ knows what it’s like to be emotionally hurt, as He was betrayed by those He loved and who were closest to Him. Christ knows what it’s like to have nothing, as even the clothes on His back, the only things He ever owned, were gambled away after His death. Christ knows what it’s like to be undervalued and underappreciated, as He was sold for a pitiful 30 pieces of silver. Christ knows what it’s like to be failed by others, as all of His disciples abandoned Him. Christ is the only one who knows how to be perfectly obedient and faithful to God in all circumstances because He has literally walked in our shoes and then some, and done it perfectly.
Only Christ truly understands what we are going through, no matter what we are going through, because He has been there, and remained perfectly faithful through it all. That is why we can trust Christ and lean on Him with the full weight of our hurt and pain and troubles.
God equips us through the most disappointing and painful experiences of our lives, for the ministry of encouragement. Had Paul Foytack not failed years earlier himself, he would not have been able to offer Chase such meaningful comfort.
It is through God’s comfort to us in our times of pain and disappointment that God equips us to comfort and minister to people when they need it. Knowing that God knows first-hand what we and everyone else is going through not only comforts us but gives purpose to our hurt and our troubles as God calls us to comfort others with the same comfort He has given us.
No matter what disappointments or troubles you face at the moment, know that “it’s another piece of experience” you can use to be a comfort to others. Know that “it has nothing to do with what you’re going to be or what’s going to happen in the future.” No matter what, by faith in Christ, you are a child of God and have the assurance of God’s forgiveness and salvation.
Thanks for spending time with me again in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
