Monday, July 5, 2021
There is no way we are perfect!
Forgiven we can do wonders
for each other.
Exodus 20:7
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Luke 11:2
He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.’
Words of Grace For Today
How can we live a perfectly righteous life, enjoying everything in creation as we and it was intended to be enjoyed?
The ten commandments are a basic framework of how to live well in community in God’s creation.
The first thing is to get things right about God: to know God, to speak well of God, to speak well to God. God is not just another thing in creation. Nor is God just another being in creation. Nor is God just another special entity beyond creation. God is Creator of us and all that is! God is the only entity beyond creation.
God is not disengaged from us or from creation. God is far more than creation and yet God is always with us in creation. God is intimately involved with every little detail of our lives and every thread of creation’s time.
God is also for us.
God is interested in us getting the best out of life that life has to offer.
In a word more powerful than we will ever be able to know: God love us.
God wants us to know God, and respect God.
God wants us to be for all of creation.
God wants us to respect creation and other people.
In a word more powerful than we will ever be able to know: God wants us to love God, and all of God’s creation, and all of God’s people.
That would make for a perfectly righteous life for us and everyone.
How far we fall from that ideal!
In fact, God does not acquit us on any charge as we live so much of our lives against God, against creation and against each other!
God judges us guilty, deserving of death!
And then God forgives us! Again, and again, and again, and on and on and on all our lives!
How can we respond?
Well we could try not to misuse God’s name, for starters, and thereby teaching ourselves to respect God, which is the beginning of love.
There is so much more that we can do, with marginal success, except one thing we can do nearly perfect all the time. We can pray.
We can pray as Jesus taught us, including that we can pray that God’s name be hallowed and that God’s Rule will come – though it is come near and will come completely one day whether we pray or not. Praying for it to come helps us to remember that we are able to act towards others with love since God’s Rule is already here.
As an aside since it is a huge issue today (again as many times in history): God does not have gender and God has all genders. It is our referring to God solely as having only one gender that skews our ability to see each other with love. It is our refusal to refer to God with any one gender (to say God does not have that gender) that skews our ability to see each other with love.
Historically Christians have referred to God as male, a reflection of a mistaken idea worked out against us all that males are more human, more like God, more powerful than females. Huge mistake.
The efforts to correct this are often as hate-fuelled and therefore so skewed as to make love impossible.
It’s time we prayed that God’s Rule would come now for us on these issues, so that we are freed to address God as mother, as parent, as Abba, and with all other labels of gender, so that we see that all genders are a reflection of God’s goodness and love for us all in creation!