Monday, October 19, 2020
Whether it seems we stand alone, like the tree, or the ice house, where everyone passes us by, or turns far away from us,
God created us all,
and we are ALL in this together!
Psalm 146:7
Who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry? The Lord sets the prisoners free.
John 8:36
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
Words of Grace For Today
Who executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, and sets the prisoners free?
We should all do this each day!
Do we? Not many and not much! We leave this to God to do.
Who frees humans from their captivity, the real captivity that robs life from us, the captivity to sin (to turn away from God and try to make our way in life on our own, almost always at other people’s expense … so that people are oppressed by our efforts to get ahead in life, so that people go hungry while we are well fed and live in superfluous comfort, so that people are imprisoned for telling the truth as we lie in order to gain and retain our ill-gotten privileges and wealth!
Yes! Who executes justice, feeds the hungry and sets prisoners free when we are the oppressors, the one’s who take away food, and lie to have people imprisoned?
We leave it to God!
And God’s people step forward to undo the injustice, hunger, and falsely imprisonment that we cause … and ignore … or worse, celebrate, as if the one’s we’ve done these atrocities to are our enemies.
They are not. They are God’s people, on this sojourney in life with us.
Thanks be to God, God’s Son, Jesus the Christ, came to live, heal, forgive, die, and be resurrected that we might know God chooses to free us from our captivity to sin.
The Son frees us, and we are free indeed!
Free to be the one’s to bring true justice to the oppressed so no one need fear their neighbour or the authorities’ bullying, false arrests, and robbing of life; to feed the hungry so no one is hungry or without the basic necessities of life; and to set the prisoners free so that no one is falsely convicted or falsely imprisoned, and more …
so that all people will know that God’s Son has set us all free from captivity to sin … we can trust that God will bring out of us all the goodness that God created us and all of creation to be.
That’s such a fundamental revolution in the way people think, speak and write, and act that so many people resist this freedom.
And the injustice, hunger for daily bread, and false imprisonments continue and even increase.
It is no solution to turn on (and try to exterminate like the pests they are) the bullies, the oppressors, those who take, deprive others of, and hoard the daily food available in creation, and those who hold others in prison cells or poverty in a reserve or in a land distant and separate. Others will only replace those who are exterminated, and those who exterminated others simply become the oppressors.
God wants a victory for all, a double victory (as Martin Luther King Jr. called it), a victory where everyone is free. God does not delight in an evil person’s death. God delights in Jesus setting them free.
What else did we think God created all this universe, and us in it, for, but for us all to live, choose, love, and hope freely … all by Grace alone?