Curve Balls

While studying in Romans this past week, I came across a statement by Matthew Henry that struck me: "In every willful sin, there is contempt of the goodness of God. And though the branches of man's disobedience are very various, all spring from the same root" (Rom. 2 commentary). How many times do we sin willfully and think to ourselves, "I hate God's goodness"? I don't think that I've ever had that surface as a conscious thought, but it is very true. When God places something in our lives that is difficult to deal with or impossible to escape, the urge to walk away (thus, sin willfully) can be great. The struggle within to accept problems and deal with them in God's strength instead of our own can be enormous. Life offers various hurts and wounds us quite frequently, and we can get used to dealing with these small, expected pains. But let God throw a curve ball in and just watch out! A curve ball can take many forms, but when you are expecting a fast ball straight up the middle and it abruptly curves down and toward you, it can be disconcerting to say the least. I know this much from all my years of playing softball: you cannot hit the ball if you take your eye off of it. This can become an analogy for us as Christians: keep your eye on God and don't pull off of the problem. I guarantee that if we do "think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience" (Rom. 2:4), we will not be able to hit he curve ball God throws or allows to be thrown to us to mature us. If we quit, we are essentially hating the goodness of God, and who wants to go there when one day we will stand before Him with eternity in the balance?