Surprised by Grace (14): There’s no regret

I can never crack it.
Cannot figure it out.
Utterly surprised.

Why a tiny nation can survive in the Middle East surrounded by perennially antagonistic peoples?
Why their people consistently emerge as leading and excellent success stories in various fields?
Try one might to ascribe it to a super power being the puppet master. No satisfactory explanation emerged.

What about the theory that they earned this special inexplicable blessing?
Or that their ancestors earned it for them to benefit?
But those arguments are even harder to sustain—history provides ample evidence to deny the claim.

Just consider the archetype, the king who was said to have made a solemn promise, to look for the place to house God, to the point of even forsaking rest. (Ps 132:1-5)
The king even thought he would be owed a favor. That God would be forever indebted.

Never mind the same king was an adulterer and a murderer.
Never mind the same king with devious scheming sent the husband, one of his soldiers, to death, so as to possess the wife cleanly. Hypocrisy is like rubbing salt to wounds of adultery and murder!
Never mind the king spiralled down towards the end of his reign.

So what did the king do that he could feel entitled to a reward?

Nothing of merit.

Why then that tiny nation gets protected and their people achieve successes?

Why?
No good reason.
But,
For the Lord has chosen Jerusalem; he has desired it for his home. (Ps 132:13)

He has chosen.
It’s on Him.
Success or failure, no matter.
It’s on Him.
That’s the characteristic of election——That He has chosen.

Why has he chosen them?
No good reason.
Even if there’s, there’s no need.
Election is stubborn.
Election needs only the one who choses.
He.

Merit has no claim to election.
Efforts have none to being chosen either.
As are genes.

What about that good king who looked for God’s resting place?
Didn’t that thought at least count for something?
Possibly but unlikely.

It is written “For I have chosen . . .”
First person singular.
That’s who determines.

An act of grace, no less.

Abraham Journeying into the Land of Canaan (from Wikimedia Commons)