An Enemy to the Lesser.

Isaiah 63:

7-9 I’ll make a list of God’s gracious dealings,
    all the things God has done that need praising,
All the generous bounties of God,
    his great goodness to the family of Israel—
Compassion lavished,
    love extravagant.
He said, “Without question these are my people,
    children who would never betray me.”
So he became their Savior.
    In all their troubles,
    he was troubled, too.
He didn’t send someone else to help them.
    He did it himself, in person.
Out of his own love and pity
    he redeemed them.
He rescued them and carried them along
    for a long, long time.

10 But they turned on him;
    they grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned on them,
    became their enemy and fought them.

There is so much comfort in knowing that God can never be bad. Even if His loves, His children, turn from Goodness and Love to pursue their own version of what they think goodness and love should be, God cannot be anything but True Goodness and True Love… and becomes an enemy to the lesser.

I imagine a child begging to make themself lesser, wanting to throw away their creativity, their kindness, their gentleness, their wonder, their strength, their courage, and their joy to assimilate to a world that is sad and afraid and devoid of joy. A parent, knowing their child, begins to fight against the assimilation, and from the outside, looks the part of the enemy to the child, but is, in all actuality and truth, fighting for their child.  God fights for us. He will never stop fighting for us, and He is Good.

“You let the world who doesn’t know the first thing about living tell you how to live. … He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did it all on his own, with no help from us!… Now God has..all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us… All we do is trust him enough to let him do it.” -Ephesians 2