Closing the gap …

What I thought would be another mundane afternoon turned out to be more like a wild west adventure.

As a young teen, I spent some time living on a ranch in northern Arizona that was almost 900,000 acres. It was a historic old ranch where the cattle grazed freely on the high desert range.

I had heard stories that wild horses roamed the land, but was told I would probably never see them. These spirited, untamed animals saw and heard humans before we could ever know they were there, and would be long gone before we could even catch sight of them.

The stories seemed to grow as they were told. Stories of whole herds of horses galloping freely across the desert, with one such herd being led by a white stallion.

It sounded more like folk-lore than fact.

Until that afternoon, when I saw the white stallion with my own eyes!

My dad and I were creeping along a rugged dirt path in a Ford four-wheel-drive truck, inspecting water lines, when we crested a hill. About a hundred yards directly ahead of us stood the white stallion, with a few other wild horses trailing him. The ears of the stallion suddenly perked straight up as it looked in our direction. Instantly, the white stallion burst into a full gallop in the opposite direction, with the other horses following fast in a whirlwind of dust.

My dad down-shifted and set out across the rough desert terrain in pursuit, but within about ten seconds we temporarily lost sight of the beautiful white stallion and the small herd he was leading. The stallion put a huge distance between us and him in just a matter of seconds. We didn’t stand a chance of closing the gap. A couple of times the stallion, now looking more like a white dot on the horizon, seemed to stop as if measuring the growing distance between us and him, almost as if telling us he was in charge. Then he turned and broadened the gap between us until he finally disappeared from our sight.

That story comes to mind when I read Proverbs 15:29, which states, “The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”

There’s a platitude bandied around the church that says, “God accepts you just as you are.” That sounds nice, but it isn’t true.

God loves us just as we are. God receives us just as we are. But He doesn’t “accept” us just as we are. Instead, God will receive us, but insists on transforming us into the likeness of His Son.

A holy God has nothing to do with that which is unholy. Light has nothing to do with darkness. Although God keeps His watch on both “… the wicked and the good” (Proverbs 15:3), there is a distance that separates a holy God from those who choose to be wicked.

As much as those who pursue sinful living may also want to occasionally include elements of holiness in their lives, they cannot have both. Sin doesn’t mix with holiness. “The LORD is far from the wicked …” And so a distance remains between the wicked and a holy God.

Kind of like chasing a white stallion.

That gap between holy God and wicked humanity disappears when we turn from chasing sin to pursue the holiness of God. Verse 29 states, “… he hears the prayer of the righteous.”

Instead of an imposing gulf of separation, God is attentive to those who run with Him instead of running from Him; to those who seek after righteousness and abandon sinfulness.

God has spent all of human history bringing about the means of closing the separation that exists between us and Him. He desires an everlasting communion with us. We can draw close to Him by pursuing the righteousness He offers us through Christ.

What’s your choice?

Scotty