Day 79: Out of Love
Read: Genesis 11:5-9
“It’s hot. Don’t touch the pan,” my parents warned my younger sister. She looked up at them with skepticism and began inching her way to the stovetop. “We’re serious. You’ll hurt yourself, so stay away from the pan,” they said with an increasingly stern tone and then turned to finish cooking dinner. As soon as they looked the other way, my sister quickly made her way to the stove and touched the pan. Her face slowly shifted from one of defiance to pain as the reality of the burn made its way from her fingers through her nervous system.
When my parents told Anisa that the pan was off limits, they were setting a safeguard to prevent her from hurting herself. They knew more than my sister did at that age about stovetops, and so they set boundary lines. She was not happy about this though and thought that their sternness and discipline was unfair and unnecessary rather in her best interest.
Just the same, when God disciplined the men who built the tower of Babel, He did so out of love and protection. God dispersed the people and gave them different languages so that they could not continue to work together. This may seem like a harsh punishment, but it is actually grace. God disciplined them in a way that gave them another chance and helped them flourish. God didn’t make this decision rashly. He first went down to see the city and then talked together with the Trinity. He knew that if man continued to be able to talk together, they would continue to sin on grand scales. By speaking different languages, their capability to pursue self-destructive sin together would be limited.
One of God’s roles is our heavenly Father. He loves His children and wants what is best for them. God knows that if we follow Him, we will be content, find joy, and be forgiven for our sins. He knew that if the people continued to speak the same language and live together, they would rely on each other and seek their own glory rather than His. Their towers would do nothing but topple on top of them.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” But on the other hand, Paul said in Philippians 3:8, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
God never disciplines out of spite but out of love for His children whose affection He is jealous for. Is there a conviction God has revealed to you? If so, thank God that it is out of love and ask how He wants you to move forward in light of it.