Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Everything, Everyone
will bow to the Light of God.
Ezekiel 18:23
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?
John 12:46
I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.
Words of Grace For Today
There is an immense amount of corruption and evil in the world, starting right here at home in Alberta.
It is easy to think someone needs to eradicate those responsible, somehow or other; to cut the legs right out from underneath them, to stop them from doing what they are doing; and for us to pray that God ends their evil by removing them from the face of the earth.
God works in different ways than eradicating evil. God rescues the person doing the evil, saves them from their own evil self, their own evil intention and corruption. That way there is no need for another evil death.
Instead there is a double victory: first that the evil stops being done to us. Second, that the person ceases to be evil.
That sounds terrific, though we humans tend to like revenge, so we hang on to the possibility that if the evil doing people do not repent, then perhaps God will remove them after all.
There are people who regularly are bullies, cruel bullies, who threaten other people’s lives as often as they can, and since they have, their whole live long, lied and cheated to get power they have lots of power to threaten and more, to kill other people … and not even be charged with murder.
God knows what they do.
God chooses to rescue them.
Most of us are not so evil. Our sins are run of the mill, which does not make us any better in God’s eyes, it’s just we do not commit crimes. If we are convicted of a crime it’s a false conviction. Some measures of the world would consider us really good, honest, trustworthy, and productive citizens. Still we sin against God. So from God’s perspective we are just as evil as those who falsely convict, bully, threaten, and kill people from their positions of power, safe from prosecution.
Thank God for God’s Grace, for we are all rescued from our sins.
It’s just we certainly wish the cruel bullies that kill us with immunity would be stopped, if not today, then already yesterday.
God can you help us with that? Please.
Jesus commands us to love our enemies, so we do.
Even as they actively seek to kill us with their threats, bullying and cruel exercise of their power.
God, save the children from learning from this that they also must lie and cheat to have enough power to be the ones who threaten, bully, and treat others cruelly, even killing them, in order to keep it from being done to them.
When we are lost in the darkness, God rescues us. This we trust. God’s Grace is what the Light of Christ brings us to be able to always see, for ourselves, for our loved ones, and even for our enemies. Threatening, bullying and being cruel to others, even to their death, has no part in us after Jesus rescues and brings us into the light.
What will you be this day? Are you one to teach children sacrificial love, even of one’s enemies, is the key to life as God’s creatures? Or do you teach children that cheating and lying are the only way to become one who threatens, bullies and kills others … all in order that it not be done to them. The price, of course for cheating and lying to get through life, is the terror of guilt that never stops. The price for living sacrificial love will inevitably and eventually be that one loses one’s life to save others.
Who are we? We are children of God!
Who are you?