Saturday, February 19, 2022
All Our Own Proud Work
Is Nothing
If We Do Not Work
Out of God’s Unconditional Love
For Us and All People.
2 Chronicles 30:8
Do not now be stiff-necked as your ancestors were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has sanctified for ever, and serve the Lord your God, so that his fierce anger may turn away from you.
Luke 14:15
One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’
Words of Grace For Today
Yield ourselves to the Lord, do not be stiff-necked as our ancestors were.
Great words of advice, and if the reward for yielding and not being stiff-necked is to have God’s fierce anger turn away from us, well…
well then, who in their right mind would ever be stiff-necked, and who in their right minds would not yield to the Lord??!!
Except we do all the time, holding our own rights up high, our own abilities out in front of our journeys in life, our own accomplishments of wealth, power, renown, and all else we are proud of and depend on each day to provide us security from the vagaries of life’s journey. Our own accomplishments are of course reached by stomping on others, taking from others, ensuring others remain oppressed, persecuted, abused, disadvantaged, cast out and not wealthy, powerful, or of great renown.
Ahh, we humans and our little games of stealing life from others so that we can have more … but
but more of what?
More security we think, but it can disappear in a flash.
More solid reputation we think, but our underbellies just keep getting bigger and bigger and more and more vulnerable and the chance of us being exposed as frauds and cruel people grows with each of our efforts to secure our own journeys.
More power we think! More wealth we think! But power and wealth can disappear overnight when we are not alert or even as we are watching very alert.
Even so all our wealth, power, renown, and security, and all that we have accumulated and accomplished for ourselves still leaves us as failures, empty shells of the living, creative, loving, enterprising creatures God created us to be … and there remains a void in our heart of hearts, at the centre of our minds, and in the space all around us … no matter what we try to fill our hearts, minds and spaces with. We simply are not made to be filled with anything other than …
other than, well, adoration for our God and Creator:
an adoration that brings us to yield at each step to God’s will.
an adoration that brings us to sacrifice ourselves (yielding even our stiff-necked pride) so that all other people will have the necessities of life, and so that all other people will know God’s unconditional love … through us.
an adoration that brings us joy even as we face the greatest challenges in life and the worst attacks by our enemies.
And we will have enemies, if we practice God’s unconditional love for all people, because God’s love exposes the futility and destruction inherent in the common human way of accomplishing our own journeys at other’s great costs.
God’s fierce anger is what God’s love looks like to stiff-necked people, because God’s love dissolves into ashes and dust all that we think we have accomplished, freeing us from the false securities which own us. The more we rely on our own accomplishments the more we lose, the more we fear losing, the more we attack those who love unconditionally.
God save us and help us to yield everything we are and can do to your unconditional, self-sacrificial love for which you have created us.