Friday, April 16, 2021
White Mountain Surrounded by Lush Forest?
…
OR
an ash dump?
Inglorious As They Are
Ashes Remind Us
How Undeserving We Are
And
How Gracious God Is To All People.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12
No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practises divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
Ephesians 5:9-11
For the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
Words of Grace For Today
For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
Good old judgment of others who practice different beliefs, followed by exiling them.
The quality that is unacceptable of the practices that are of darkness and such abhorrent practices is that they seek to claim control of what cannot be controlled.
While these practices named in Deuteronomy are unacceptable and abhorrent practices, because they deny that we are dependent on God alone for everything, we ‘good’ Christians in the church have all sorts of practices by which we try to control what cannot be controlled, and thus to control other people with rewards for compliance and punishments for non-compliance with our ill-informed claims of what is ‘right’ and ‘good’.
Should we exile all the people from the church who practice the dark arts of controlling what cannot be controlled, that is: trying to control God’s will for creation and us people in it? Were we to do that I’m quite sure that there would only be left one person, the one devilish person who evaded being exiled by others by being the exiler of all others.
In other words: we all deserve condemnation.
Thanks be to God that God is gracious.
God is gracious to all people, even those who practice abhorrent dark practices.
Our response, so much healthier for all, is to be grateful, rather than judgmental.
Yet we so often choose to ‘get rid of the trouble makers’. Thus our churches are not filled with sinners. Instead they are mostly empty, and those that come are mostly judgmental sinners.
God have mercy on us all!