Thursday, April 21, 2022
One Guest Took Exception
to the Hospitality
I Offered
and
This Was the Result!
Amos 5:15
Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Ephesians 5:8-9
For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.
Words of Grace For Today
When the ‘chips are down’ is when one’s true character is revealed.
Or as Michelle Obama said at the Democratic convention that nominated Barack to return for another four years in the White House about her initial misgivings of what the presidency would do her husband, “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.”
So the Hebrew people are dismembered into fragments by their enemies. Yet Amos urges the people to conduct themselves against evil, for good, and to establish justice in the gate. Perhaps God will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph and they may become a great people again. When they do, they will need to be able to govern themselves with honour and truth, and justice.
It is said many times, we, the children of light, should bear the fruit of living in the light. We should be the people of all that is good and right and true.
My guest’s reaction was unexpected. A blow to my minimal comfort, to my dignity, and my face is hardly what one expects from such a humble guest. I should have known better.
Like so many who fight wars, who live lives of constant deceptions to ‘get ahead’ at all costs (as long as others pay the costs), and the many who work in, feed and feed on, and who benefit from the corruption in our province, our nation, all nations, and around the world, I had gone at the lives of my guest’s relatives without regard. But then no one could expect me not to, could they (as all tyrants and liars are wont to say!?)
So what if I cut them off from the rest of their ‘family’ and even from their own identity as standing tall and strong against the winds of change. Their life’s work as carbon negative beings had come to an end. So why not take them for my own purposes? So what if I cut them to bits and burned them to provide for myself. They were nothing any more, right? Besides it’s not like there are not plenty more like them where they came from!
So what if I had knocked them down to size for my purposes. So what if I split them up? Then this one guest, so odd a guest it was heading off apparently in it’s life from all expectations to take twists and turns that seemed unnatural in a world that is all about being natural!
I had not taken time to reduce this one to the simplest forms, so I was stuck using force to cut it down to size. That’s right I used the crudest and sharpest tools available to me, and added my own brute force, minimal as that may be.
Then that errant guest decided to fight back, and landed me a punch right to the lip, breaking skin, pouring blood about, and dazing me to stagger back and away. At first I wondered what had happened. Then it came back to me. That twisted guest had decided to fly at my face with unexpected speed. Could I have anticipated such a counter move? Maybe, but no guest had ever done anything remotely like this.
So what am I to do?
I will have to get out the chainsaw and go at the remains of that guest, cut it to small pieces, and feed it to the fire.
That is what one does, right?
This guest is after all, a very spirited, very twisted
…
piece of a tree.
Am I not right in pleading that this is how we deal with trees as guests? We cut them up, split them to size, and feed them to the fire to provide warmth so that we can survive.
It’s one thing to do this to trees fallen in the woods, something quite acceptable, right!?
But what can we say
about all those who do this to their guests, their neighbours, their family members, all who are real people?
Don’t think for a minute that this same treatment is not dealt out to millions of people each day. We can look at the Ukraine, but our view around the world would hardly have begun. We should not be hesitant to look at how this same behaviour flourishes right in our own backyards, our own acreages, our own houses and apartments, our own cities and towns, and similarly around the world.
We just treat guests terribly, and family, and neighbours, and strangers, and our enemies.
Oh how much better my own life would be if this guest were the only one taking potshots at me, unexpected punches to my ‘face’, and delivering knock out blows to my efforts to continue to live in God’s good creation.
How much better life would be for billions of people if all people hated evil and loved good, and established justice in the gate!
“Being [alive and under stresses unimagined] doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.”
So Covid reveals much about us as a species, as a people, and as individuals.
When and how will God be able to call us back to all that is good and right and true as people who live in the light of Christ?
When and how will our character be revealed as the people God created, redeemed, and renewed us to have?
What will it take?
Christ already died for us, to show us God’s steadfast love for us all!
What will it take?
Another punch to the face!?
Another dismembering of the people?
Pray that today God’s Spirit of the people of light will shine in and through you, and in and through each of us, and in and through all of us,
and that justice will be established in the gate, and everywhere including in our homes and churches,
and in our courts especially.