Saturday, October 17, 2020
Think you’ve seen this Path before,
Maybe, Still God Requires of Us
That We Bring Sojourn Through Life
Sharing the Fullness of Life with All People
Starting with Kindness, Truth, Justice, and Hope!
Deuteronomy 10:12
So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
James 1:22
Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
Words of Grace For Today
God requires of us?
We must be doers of the word?
Luther described James as a straw Gospel. Like a straw house that the wind blows away with ease and fire burns quickly away. All chaff, no substance.
Before God requires anything of us, Before we ‘get’ to be doers of the Word, God acts.
God acts by creating us, making us able to love, which requires free choice, which means we sin and are bound to choose to sin, so God acts to forgive us, redeem us, and set us free to love, choose, sin, and God walks with us to forgive us, redeems us and set us free again and again to love ….
Always God acts first. Then we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to do what is ‘required’ of us:
to fear God, to walk in God’s ways, to serve God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength!
Make no mistake: it is everyone’s obligation to fear and love God, to walk in God’s ways, and to serve God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength: to be DOERS of God’s Word. We do not get a pass to sit on the sidelines of life and allow EVIL to have it’s way with us and others. We are to WORK against EVIL, in all it’s forms of injustice, violence, and degradation of life.
We do not get to sit on the sidelines like those in Hottelstedt who watched train load after train load of people in cattle cars and box cars pass through their town and not work to stop the obvious extermination of masses of people, genocide to provide for a ‘pure’ Aryan nation. After the war was lost, they excused themselves that they had no idea what was happening just a few kilometres away.
Our duty includes being curious about the work of evil around us, to speak up, to speak out, and to work to stop it. We use Grace and forgiveness, giving God opportunity to rejoice at the redemption of yet more sinners.
It’s not so easy as following rules. It requires everything of us! Thank God life, all of life, has an honourable and glorious purpose! To serve God and be the ones who bring God’s will to actuality here and now … by being the bearers of forgiveness, redemption, and freedom.
What a life!