Friday December 29, 2023
Matthew 11:6
“Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”
None of us can avoid feeling the offense which is inherent in the person of Jesus. Sooner or later we are confronted with this enigmatic, inscrutable aspect of His person which even John the Baptist experienced and by which he was tempted.
Look! Yonder sit a father and a mother, one on each side of a little bed. Their child is in convulsions. On their knees they have prayed God to heal their little one. But nay, God does not heal. They have prayed imploringly that God would spare the little one from the cramps. But nay, the little one continues to lie there in its pains until death comes at last.
This seems hard to bear. And Jesus cannot say more at the time than He said to John the Baptist: “Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me.”
See, a little group of people is making its way home from the churchyard. It is a father and five children. The two youngest children were too small to go along today; they are at home. The others have accompanied mother to her last resting place. The father is a believer in God. But now rebellion steals into his heart. How could God make them motherless, all these little ones?
And for the time being Jesus cannot answer otherwise than he answered the Baptist: “Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me.”
To be God, our God must also be inscrutable. None of us have therefore learned to know God until we have become aware of His inscrutability.
Not until then is our faith really tested. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” This is “blind” trust. However, no faith sees more than blind faith. It sees and knows God so well that it relies upon Him notwithstanding His inscrutability, notwithstanding that aspect of Him which is an occasion of stumbling.
“Blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me.”
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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