Friday, October 8, 2021
The Golden Path
Down
To Life Abundant
Is Not So Cut and Dried
As the Wooded Way
Down Home
Ezekiel 20:11
I gave them my statutes and showed them my ordinances, by whose observance everyone shall live.
Philippians 4:8
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Words of Grace For Today
What did God do?
What do we do in response? What can we?
God, as Ezekiel reminds us, gave us God’s commandments, so that in following them we might live well. In response we built a great tradition of interpreting God’s Laws to fit every circumstance and every variation through time and place. Yet we are left with no hope of being able to actually obey all God’s commandments, down to the last little minutia that we’ve broken them down into … nor the spirit of the commandments, not at all.
Following Laws guided us for generations, though it really did not provide a way to live well. Either we have to admit we fail to follow God’s commands or we have to try to deceive even ourselves in order to seem to follow them.
Enter Jesus, who leaves us with a story written in the life of God’s own son living as a human. The point of Jesus’ story is that God loves us unconditionally and forgives us and renews us for life, life lived well. We only need to surrender our pride to the fact that God loves and saves us when we least deserve it. That seems to be a proverbial bitter pill to swallow, so we avoid the point of Jesus’ story and make it in to so many other things that are inconsequential …
and off we go into the wilds of life all on our own, no better than our ancestors who either ignored God’s commandments or pretended to keep them while breaking them morning, noon, and night.
Paul, assured that God saves him and all others, by grace alone, not by our merit, travels to share the Good News of Jesus’ story, and congregations form around his teaching. One in Phillipi supports Paul as he travels on to spread the Good News to more and more places. The letter to the Philippians is one of Paul’s warmest, kindest, most heartfelt. Filled with gratitude and wise advice on how to live our the renewed life given to us by Jesus.
In the passage for today, Paul gives advice on how to focus one’s mind to the greatest benefit of all those the saints work to share life abundant with. It is to focus and think on whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise.
This advice is not a formula on how to fulfill God’s commands, or how to earn God’s forgiveness and approval. It is what we can do after we humbly accept that we can only beg for God’s mercy … and then set out to be God’s Grace for others. Starts with what we spend our time thinking about.
So what’s on your mind today? What will you expend energy towards? How will you shine Christ’s Light into the darkness?