Temptation
Day 595, Sunday, Mar. 29
1 Corinthians 10:1-22
How often have you heard some variation on the statement, “God won’t give you more than you can bear”?
This is a paraphrase of part of today’s reading. It’s a paraphrase that is very close to right, but dangerously wrong.
The paraphrase is based on verse 13, which reads, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” The words “temptation” and “tempted” can also be translated as “testing” and “tested.”
The biggest problem with the popular paraphrase of the verse is that it attributes the temptation or testing to God: God won’t give you more than you can bear. That sounds like God is throwing a challenge at us, limited only by our ability to withstand it. But the verse doesn’t say that the temptation or testing is from God; what is from God is protection: “And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”
God doesn’t amuse himself by putting obstacles in our path to see how we react. He doesn’t even place challenges in our path to teach us lessons.
The tests we face are the temptations everyone faces: desire, pain, grief, hunger, loneliness, greed.
That’s an important point. We want to think that no one can understand what we’re going through because they have not faced exactly the same situation. But our struggles have more in common with those of the people around us than they are different. That’s not to minimize anyone’s particular pain, but reminds us we are all struggling in the same fallen world. Temptation is temptation. Hurt is hurt. No one is exempt.
God doesn’t bring our problems, but he does bring the solution: “he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

Sunday meditation

Psalms 104:10-18
He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the junipers. The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

Prayer focus
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

-Rev. Mark Fleming