Kamikaze Roundabout

Altering a structure that is already in place rather than starting from scratch and building something new often causes problems. That certainly seems to be the case with our local nightmare roundabout. Actually this ingenious piece of road engineering works well enough most of the time. But many motorists feel as though they are taking their lives in their hands when they attempt to navigate its cramped confines and its five bewildering exits – hence the popular label “Kamikaze Roundabout”.

The roundabout is now to be made more user-friendly. However, it seems that matters will become worse before they improve. A bewildering forest of traffic cones has appeared. What was once a predictably routine nightmare has become a constantly changing and even more nightmarish situation for the time being.

After the Great Flood God promised never to destroy all life on earth again (Genesis 8:21). However, the human race again needed complete reconstruction further along in history. We read in Jeremiah 31:31-34 how God announced a new covenant with His people:

"The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord."For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (NIV)

Our Daily Bread meditation writer Julie Ackerman Link penned a reflection on this that made me think straight away of Kamikaze Roundabout!

“Here in Michigan we joke that we have two seasons: winter and road construction. Harsh winters damage road surfaces, so repair crews begin their work as soon as the ice melts and the ground thaws. Although we call this work “construction,” much of what they do looks like “destruction.” In some cases, simply patching holes is not an option. Workers have to replace the old road with a new one.

“That’s what it can feel like when God is at work in our lives. Throughout the Old Testament, God told His people to expect some major renovation on the road between Him and them (Isa. 62:10-11; Jer. 31:31). When God sent Jesus, it seemed to the Jews as if their way to God was being destroyed. But Jesus wasn’t destroying anything. He was completing it (Matt. 5:17). The old way paved with laws became a new way paved with the sacrificial love of Jesus.

“God is still at work replacing old ways of sin and legalism with the way of love that Jesus completed. When He removes our old ways of thinking and behaving, it may feel as if everything familiar is being destroyed. But God is not destroying anything; He is building a better way. And we can be confident that the end result will be smoother relationships with others and a closer relationship with Him.”

“Upheaval often precedes spiritual progress,” the meditation ends. I say “Amen”. I am a creature of habit, but give me upheaval any day if it will bring me closer to my Saviour.

Night and Day

In Hebrew thought, in the Old Testament of our Bibles, each day begins at sunset. This seems strange to us. Perhaps, though, it is no more odd than our usual arrangement in the West. We are fast asleep when day starts at midnight and only wake – if we are fortunate enough to be good sleepers – when a fair few hours of the day are already spent and gone. Even so, to have a day that begins as night falls must change one’s perspective on life.

The eminent 19th-century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote a meditation on Genesis 1:5 (“And the evening and the morning were the first day”) that gave me much pause to ponder.

Spurgeon explains that the fact of darkness coming first in the Hebrew “day” makes a spiritual point for us. “Observe that the evening comes first. [In our spiritual natures] we are darkness first in order of time, and the gloom is often first in our mournful apprehension, driving us to cry out in deep humiliation, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ The place of the morning is second, it dawns when grace overcomes nature.”

Spurgeon also points out that the word we use to describe a 24-hour period is “day”. It includes both darkness and light, “and yet the two together are called by the name that is given to the light alone!” This too corresponds exactly to our spiritual experience. “In every believer there is darkness and light, and yet he is not to be named a sinner because there is sin in him, but he is to be named a saint because he possesses some degree of holiness.”

This should be an enormous comfort to those who wonder how God can regard them as children of His when there is so much sin and spiritual darkness still in them. Just as the day takes its name not from the darkness but from the daylight, so the word of God treats believers as if they were full of light, as indeed they will be before long. “You are called the child of light, though there is darkness in you still. You are named after what is the predominating quality in the sight of God, which will one day be the only principle remaining.”

How supremely encouraging this is! On the one hand, all our spiritual darkness as sinners is intolerable and disgusting to God, to be shunned and rejected. Yet by His mercy in Christ God matches us up with the “sacred, high, eternal noon” which is the condition of things when we are finally in His presence.

The sun shall be no more

your light by day,

nor for brightness shall the moon

give you light;

but the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your God will be your glory.

Your sun shall no more go down,

nor your moon withdraw itself;

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your days of mourning shall be ended.

Isaiah 60:19-20 ESV

Thank God for His patience in treating us this way. Let us resolve to honour Him by banishing the remaining darkness in

our lives as far as we can!