Sunday, August 2, 2020
Light
Love
Hope
Even in the dark woods of life.
Deuteronomy 32:7
Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you.
2 Timothy 1:13
Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
We do not face these days on our own.
We have not come all on our own to believe the old, old story of Jesus and his love for all creation and trust the work of the Holy Spirit. We have received for many generations the Word that gives life, the living water that quenches all thirst, and the bread of life that sustains us no matter what comes our way.
Remember.
It is a powerful ability that humans have, to remember the things of yesterday, of yesteryear, or yester-eon. We have words of language, spoken and written, heard and read, conceived and understood. The words we share carry meaning and portent beyond just themselves, for as poetry, the words of everyday communicate far more than just their meanings strung together. Our words communicate spirit, yearnings, hopes, visions … and love.
When all other necessities are provided for life, or even before, we need two things uncommonly considered the basic needs of life (Sölle): meaningful labour and love (the ability to love others unconditionally and to be loved unconditionally.)
It is part of our human drive to grasp beyond what is obvious, to create standards and rules and guides and codifications of things of meaning from our past. These cannot carry the meaning of spirit and love, but they can hint at what people of yesteryear encountered as the Holy Spirit guided them.
The worship of the standard, the piety, the rule, the guide, the codification is a natural decay of living faith. It moves us into a realm of false comfort wherein we chase control of faith.
Faith with integrity, before it decays and is still living faith, is beyond our control. Living faith, carried by living Word, is a wild ride through the pitfalls of life.
We are left …
We are left to remember what we have been taught and …
… and to encounter the Spirit anew for ourselves and …
… and we trust, hope, yearn, envision and love for ourselves all that God has given us.