Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Crooked Tree!
Even crooked trees have a place in God’s Kingdom.
2 Chronicles 30:18-19
For a multitude of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, ‘The good Lord pardon all who set their hearts to seek God, the Lord the God of their ancestors, even though not in accordance with the sanctuary’s rules of cleanness.’
Luke 19:2-3
A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.
Words of Grace For Today
There is ample Grace in God’s history dealing with us people, so that we may have no doubts that God may choose to be gracious with people whom we may think would not be God’s favoured people.
We codify faith, and move it from being living faith to dead faith, and then judge others as being unacceptable (ourselves included) because they/us do not practice the demands of the codes we have made.
Living faith lives with codes as important, instructive, but not indelibly correct or wise. Living faith is above all else, unconditionally loving of all people, as God is for us … all of us wretched sinners.
We do not defy the codes of faith practices adopted by our faith communities. We practice codes to express our thanks to God for all God gives us. But we do not demand of others that they practice any specific code. We allow God’s Grace to guide our response to their keeping or not keeping the codes of our faith community.
Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus, and invited himself to join Zacchaeus at his home, even though the crowd knew Zacchaeus as a terrible cheat and tax collector who exploited them to make himself rich.
Jesus always sees something good … in each and every one of us.
It is the least we can do for each other.