Blaise Pascal – Falling into Presumption
Pascal first shows us that there is a huge contradiction in a person’s relationship to God. Our true source of joy is in God, but we have an illness of sin that cuts us off from Him. We have a duty to love God, but we are full of sin that leads us away from Him (143). The presumption, then, that most people take is that they must do something to rid themselves of the sin that draws them away from the source of joy. In a prophetic statement, God tells Pascal and us, “You wanted to make yourself your own center and do without my help” (144).
This effort to do it on our own is in vain (145). Only God can help us to understand who we really are in Him (145). It is by grace, not by the natural, that this happens (145). The amazing thing is, God wants to do this through his will and great mercy (146). We can do nothing to earn it. Through seeking Him with our whole heart, we can see Him, and He will be “perfectly recognizable” to us (147).
I find that in my life, I fall into the pattern of wanting to earn God’s love. For a five-year period of my life, I spent many fruitless hours trying to earn God’s love by doing. The more I did, the more distant I was from Him. This was because I was trying to earn his love. At the end of this period, I came to myself, and in a flood of tears, cried out, “I can’t do it anymore!” It was at that point that God told me, “It’s about time, now let me take over.”
All references with page numbers are from Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups, Revised and expanded (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005).
The Wandering Wesleyan 