Friday, August 7, 2020
No Matter How Dark the Road
God comes to rescue us
again.
Zechariah 1:17
Proclaim further: Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.
2 Corinthians 1:10
He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.
Words of Grace For Today
We all would like to know that we have dealt with a challenge in our lives, settled it, and made it possible to move on … to move on to better things.
It would be good to know that the bear that came snooping around last spring, at whom I yelled at the top of my lungs and who ran off, would not be a problem. It would be good to know that the bear who ran from a woman out on a walk, not once but twice, as she yelled at it, would no longer be a problem. It would be good to know that the bear who came snooping around the tent the other night, not just once but twice, is now gone and will not be a problem again. But it’s the same bear, and it will be back. Someone has left food out and it has learned that people mean food. It will be back, and again until someone is hurt badly or killed and the bear is moved away, or it is killed. Humans and bears don’t mix well, but humans make good bear meals, and bear meat makes good supper. And there will be other bears and other stupid humans to teach them that humans mean food.
Weeds grow madly with rain and sunny heat. All efforts at picking them, cutting them, digging them up, or tilling the ground to be rid of them at best produces short terms results. Weeds are plants that have developed better survival methods than other plants. Weeds will come back … again and again even if you salt the earth, some weeds will return.
So it is with destructive habits of each and every one of us humans. Our destructive habits become habits because we learn they provide us a short-term benefit (the cost to others we learn to ignore) and we learn to ignore the long-term cost to us and others, until the long-term cost starts to disrupt our ability to carry on with our destructive habits.
It is good to know and trust that God will save us from ourselves, and from each other.
He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.
When we live, enabled by the Holy Spirit to trust God’s deliverance, to trust that God will provide more than we need, to trust that God’s favour rests on us, then we may be able to break some of our destructive habits.
We will never be able to be rid of all our destructive habits (our sins), and God will again and again come to rescue us from ourselves and from each other.
Thanks be to God that others’ lies about us do not define reality; God’s Grace does.