Reflections by Chuck Cluff, Atherton resident since 2004.
Matthew 5:48
Be perfect therefore, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.
While setting some very high standards, Jesus slips in this mandate. Wow! What a request that is. Be perfect as God is? Is this an attainable expectation God envisions for his created beings? Maybe so.
Practical perfection is actually the best something can be isn’t it? God is perfect. This means there is no better anywhere, everywhere, than how God is and how God does things. There is no love beyond God’s love, no patience beyond his, no forgiveness beyond Gods, and so on. There is no better way of doing something than how God knows to do it. There is no better way of being than how God is. So how can we be perfect like that, as God is so beyond us? Well, God isn’t asking us to be Him! Perfection for us would be our being the best we can be as God is the best He is; being perfectly who we are as God is perfectly who He is. God even helps us be that best we can be. There is the eternal perfect, meaning it can never be better, and the growing perfect. The growing perfect is being the best we can be at the time; given one’s maturity, development and realizations. The potential of a 3rd grader is what 3rd graders can do, can grasp.
What potential is, though, for each person, only God and the person know. Some children in the third grade are doing very advanced work, some behind. Each person’s practical ability is determined by capability and ambition. A person’s perfect would vary then. The end goal of all projects is fruition; the perfect conclusion. The different stages up to that completion will be perfect, even though the total project is not done. Take a building project; ground preparation, the foundation, the framing, the electrical, plumbing, roofing, finishing. Each stage is a perfect before the final perfect. It would be good for us to remember, perfect is in the eye of the beholder! A small child handed his grandma his line drawn colored masterpiece. “It’s just perfect,” she tells him, as she gives him a hug.
I see God, knowing the stage we are in, instead of criticizing us as we sometimes think and feel he does, rather saying, “Hey, that’s perfect.”
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