Things That We Did Not Look For

Things That We Did Not Look For.  Much has been said in Scripture about diligently seeking and gratefully finding, for which three cheers are always appropriate to give to the Lord. “But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 4:29). “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Prov. 8:17). “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:7-8). Yet times also exist when we stumble upon blessings for which we did not hunt, “when you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence” (Isa. 64:3)!

Perhaps keeping score of blessings, cataloging whether we sought them out or God rained them down unasked for, is an uncountable sum. “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). At the end of the day, whether we asked God in faith or received from God by grace, we are completely dependent upon him.

 For the record, nowhere in the Bible does it say, “God helps those who help themselves.” In fact, the opposite is true: God helps the helpless, the ones who can’t help themselves and therefore cease from their futile attempts of self-rescue by turning to the Lord in faith for salvation and preservation because he has done all the work at the cross. “For of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him” (Isa. 64:4). “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:4-5).

Jesus’ parables of The Hidden Treasure (Matt. 13:44) and The Pearl of Great Value (Matt. 13:45-46) include both types of blessing: sought and unsought. The man, maybe a day-laborer, unearths a treasure trove without looking for one (vs. 44). The merchant, maybe a vendor, makes a career of seeking fine pearls (vs. 45), but he found far more than was expected (vs. 46). Both situations call for deliberate, urgent action. Both are joy-filled. Both require faith. But neither gesture is burdensome, for the value of each respective treasure far outweighs the exchange of everything each man had to acquire it. They did not work for a place in the kingdom of heaven; they relinquished their grasp on everything else because the treasure of the kingdom of heaven transformed and recalibrated their entire value system.