Sunday, August 29, 2021
Accepting God’s Grace
Is To Find Our Way
To the Light,
No Matter the Obstacles.
Jeremiah 15:19
Therefore, thus says the Lord: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.
John 14:23
Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’
Words of Grace For Today
“If you turn back …”
“Those who love me …”
Everything in these phrases are turned on the view of God and humans that God demands of humans that we do what pleases God, and then, and only then, God will be pleased enough to love us and to give us worth by serving God.
This is a long and dangerous tradition that in history has proved to be so attractive and so destructive to both Christians and those they named as their enemies. And as far as that goes, for all other religions which have embraced such thinking.
Because humans are not capable of pleasing God enough to earn God’s favour enough to sustain life through all it’s challenges and temptations.
God is, on the other hand, very capable of loving humans, even when we do not deserve it. If this were not true God would never have loved any human.
…
What is true in all these words of Jeremiah and John is that God loves us.
God loves us enough to call us to turn back from our sinful ways, to return to God’s embrace, to allow God to be at home with us, so that we can keep God’s Word and so that we can speak God’s Word to all who will hear.
This begins with God’s promise to us to forgive us.
It continues despite what we do, with God renewing life in us.
Then God sends us out to exercise the same grace for all people.
Only then does our freedom come into play, our freedom to respond to God’s great mercy by confessing our sins and surrendering to God’s mercy, by extending that same mercy to others.
This is the Word that is so precious.
This is the Word that gives life abundant to us, and to all people who hear, believe, and receive God’s mercy willingly.
God’s way with humans is to rule always, yet to give us freedom to choose to love or to not love. No matter what we choose God promises to be faithful, to always love and forgive us, and to give us opportunities to return to God’s way of love and mercy.
God’s way with humans is not:
if we, then God.
God’s way with humans is:
Because God loves us when we do not deserve it at all, not at all,
Therefore we are free to choose to respond and be God’s mouthpiece, God’s doer of love in this world.
There is no surer promise nor hope of life abundant, than what God promises us.