God is Full of Compassion yet His Wrath is Disastrous (Psalm 78)

v. 38 But He being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not; yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath.

v. 39 For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.

The Lord our Heavenly Father is merciful, full of compassion, forgives iniquities, though many times we commit sins He turned away His anger because He knows that we are flesh and so weak, come and pass thru this life only once.

God is full of compassion and merciful knowing that human are but flesh.

God chooses to turn away His wrath and forgave their iniquity, destroyed not the Israelites despite of their sin of unbelief, murmuring and other sinful act against God while in their journey to get out from bondage in Egypt.

God's chosen people provoked Him.

In Psalm 78, His chosen nation, the Israelites turned away God for so many times, provoked Him, doing what He hated most- worshipping idols, murmuring and always seeking their small pleasure in Egypt not minding how God will bless them out of Egypt. They never think much about how blessed they are being chosen people by the powerful God despite of His many miracles and His will to take them away from bondage in the land of Egypt.

Christians today commit same sin against God.

This scenario is also applied to us a Christians nowadays. Despite that immeasurable love for us by the Heavenly Father and Loving God, when He gave His only begotten Son for the emancipation of our sin and save us from the eternal damnation, we are still murmuring how difficult our lives are, worrying too much about the things on this earth, thinking and acting like God never know what we need in our life.

God loves His children and able to provide all their needs.

Come to think of it, if God the Father can give His Only Begotten Son to die for our sin, can’t He give us what we really need? God attribute is love. And as a Father in Heaver, He cares much about His children. If we, human knows how to love much our children how much our Father in Heaven!  Can’t He not help us and provide our needs? He is sovereign and nothing impossible to Him. His help is on time; He is still sitting on the throne at still at work.

Christians must know very well the result and consequence of the sin of unbelief.

We should be very careful to be unbelieving, murmuring and always comparing little things to what God will give us when He brought us to the place that He wants us to be, a place where we can worship Him. God hates the unbelieving heart. And when He hates, He forsakes. Much more of this sin of unbelief, God can forsake and destroy us just like what He did to His chosen people, the Israelites.

Christians must be wise to choose God's will over permissive will.

With all of these things, having free will, we can choose between God’s will and permissive will. At the end of the day, what prevailed was a result of our choice. 

THE CHALLENGE OF WORKING FROM HOME FULL TIME.

Work at the comfort of your home carries with it the thought of staying at home during your whole working hours and seems more convenient and enticing as you first look at it. If you are working 8 to 5 during weekdays since you left your alma mater and you’ve been doing it for more than a decade, chances are you are looking for something that is more convenient, more comfortable in terms of your time and travel management.

You may even think that it is too tiresome and boring spending 5 to 6 hours by just preparation and travel time to and from work. If we add all these 5 hours for 5 days, you will have a total of 25 hours in a week spending for preparation and travel time alone. It’s one hour more than one day and one night. So, you have a total of 4 days, 4 nights and 4 hours in a month of 4 weeks and more than if the month has 5 weeks. If we compute it in a year, 49 days, 48 nights and 4 hours. That’s equivalent to one and half month! Imagine the number of hours spending every single day to prepare for the job! Enough to finish one or two modules in online courses!

Though, working from home is effective and more productive for others, reality is, you need to strictly balance and manage your time and observe it so well. Otherwise, you may find it so unproductive and too tiresome!

Things to consider to avoid eating up your scheduled time allocated for your work.

• Conversion of your home to an office workplace mode. where you can entertain and receive work related visitors; where you can’t be disturbed by unnecessary noise or unnecessary activities so you can focus at your deliverables.
• Time management. When you are at home, time seems flies so fast and even before you know it, your eight hours were already gone. Worst, if you are not careful and not strictly observing time management, you will end the day without any accomplishment.
• Focus. If you are working in a place at home which are not secluded or you are working in a place which is accessible by everyone, you can easily get distracted by everything around you, the irresistible movement of your favorite dog or cat, and most of the times, everyone in the family thinks you are free to talk to them or attend to any query or doing things for them because you are just at home. And sometimes, they will not understand that you are actually working even you are staying at home. Worse, they will easily engage you in a discussion! If you are not conscious enough, you will be definitely out of focus!
• Errands.  In a workplace (at the office), you will not be bothered in every errand at home because of your absence physically. Or maybe, it is easy to program your mind that you will do all home errands before or after work. On the other hand, working at home, there is a temptation to procrastinate having in mind that, ‘anyway, I will just be at home, I can do it as soon as I finished my deliverables ‘or ‘I can do it while I am taking my short break’. When not properly scheduled or not observing the schedule, you will end up spending your times doing petty things and neglecting the most important one – missing the deadlines.
• Meal time. If you do cooking for the family’s meal, you will spend much of your time in the preparation and dining with the family. Regularly, dining table talks take much longer than expected. And if you will not properly observe the time allocated for this activities, you will be surprised that your time already elapsed without accomplishing the scheduled output.