Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Life May Push Us Aside, Even to Topple Us,
Still, God’s Light Shines For Us
and We Can Still Grow Up, Straight Up!
Jeremiah 16:20
Can mortals make for themselves gods? Such are no gods!
1 John 5:20
We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Words of Grace For Today
We all need clean air, clean fresh water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter, meaningful labour, and the ability to love and to be loved.
At our core we strive to provide these necessities for ourselves and those for whom we are responsible. For some this striving (their own or others) results in great comfort, luxury, wealth and power. Still those who enjoy these exorbitant benefits strive for yet more. So it is with this in-born striving of us humans.
All of us get lost in this ‘dream of success;’ those who enjoy so much more than the requirements of life, and strive for yet more, AND the rest of us who can dream that such exorbitant comfort, luxury, wealth and power may one day be ours … we all get lost.
Lost we look for orientation and create ‘gods’ who can provide meaning, order, and verification that we are RIGHT in having or dreaming for such extreme privilege while others die for lack of the basics for life. The ‘gods’ can be called ‘gods’, or they can look like a sport, or a business goal, or a way of being ‘better’ than others, of succeeding at something other than serving God’s Grace to all people.
These ‘gods’ are not real. I call them godlets; we try to foist onto something quite finite the infinite of the divine. It does not work. Instead our minds, hearts and strength are perverted, twisted, and ultimately destroyed.
We are fortunate. We have the story of Jesus and God’s Love expressed in his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. This is the truth of life. This is an absolute truth, unchanging and eternal. This is the source of all that is life, of all that holds life together for individual persons and for communities.
Because we have received the Truth of God’s love and grace for all creation, then we can enjoy the necessities of life as those things that God calls us to share with all other people, exorbitantly …
as God has shared them with us,
even if we are homeless, poor, persecuted, and our death is sought by our enemies.
Compared to God’s work for us and all people, our enemies’ threats to us are nothing.
Thanks be to God.