Friday, April 29, 2022
No Matter The Obstacles or Waves,
Christ Brings Us
to Tender Hearted
Grace for All People
Zechariah 8:17
Do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath; for all these are things that I hate, says the Lord.
Ephesians 4:32
And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Words of Grace For Today
There are great ways to be in this world that provides us so little goodness.
God makes a start with us, and returns over and over again to restore us using everything possible to cure us of our our every ill that would drag us down to the pit.
Sometimes we are surprised like Saul on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus.
Saul sets out to bring in the rogue Christians, (Errant Lutherans we’d say.) Without warning The Light Strikes and The Voice Declares! And Everything is changed!
Sometimes lightning strikes (well near-strikes will do since a direct strike leaves little but a burned corpse), like Martin Luther, and we end up on a journey we had not anticipated.
Most often the journey starts rather routinely, like when a baptismal service starts or at the start of familiar songs at a concert. Hearing only the introductory chords the crowd breaks out into a roar of delight. After the applause rolls to silence the song fills the air, our minds, and our hearts, God at work:
… If it be your will, that a voice be true From this broken hill, I will sing to you From this broken hill All your praises they shall ring If it be your will … (Leonard Cohen’s If It Be Your Will)
The journey after that can be anything. God walks with us, and always calls us to be Grace for others, to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us.
The journey is full of challenges. Today the Covid Blues have set in most everywhere and intolerance, rage and violence erupt without warning around us, sometimes from within us.
What are we to do?
Martin Luther knew the blues all too well. His answer was to sit with his friend Philip Melanchthon, drink bear, and sing hymns.
Sounds, Sites, Smells, Memories, Hopes, Dreams. God uses it all to reach us and to restore us.
Whatever God guides us to do, there are so many people needing someone to reach out to them, with kindness, tender heartedness, and forgiveness.