In A Single Day
For Everyone.
Friday, May 5, 2023
Finding Our Way,
Our Wondrously Blessed Way
Through Each Day.
Zechariah 3:9
For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day.
1 John 2:2
… and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Words of Grace For Today
It is a great challenge to forgive someone who has done great damage to one’s self.
Consider the murder of one’s loved ones.
Consider the foreign ruler who with no just cause invades one’s country and decimates one’s community and livelihood and security … and peace.
Consider the liar who spreads lies and those who believe and retell such lies, until one’s reputation is destroyed and one’s way of life has become impossible leaving one living in the street or bush.
Consider the corrupt police who kill people without recourse. Or the corrupt judge who sentences innocent people to jail and makes decisions that are not even supported by the lies brought as ‘evidence’ to court.
The people so traumatized and ruined by such evil doings is nothing new. It goes back to the beginning of human times. It will continue until there are no more humans to do such things to others. One such new story really is of no interest to most people, since the injustices only can continue to happen when and because almost all people accept these injustices as ‘part of the woodwork’ of life, tolerated as long as they are not directed against them, or protested against (but only by marginalized people, to whom people simply do not listen to.)
God knows all these stories, from the beginning of time to the end of time. God knows such evil destroys not only the victims but the perpetrators. The best of life is still possible for the victims, if they are able to forgive the perpetrators (which is not to simply tolerate that such injustices continue, far from it.) The best of life is only possible for the perpetrators, if they recognize they are forgiven and are on that basis able to amend their lives.
So God provides all that for us, makes it possible.
God forgives everyone, from the beginning of time to the end of time. God makes it possible for us to forgive as well, especially to forgive ourselves. And God makes it possible for us to amend our lives so that we can live lives blessed to be blessings for others.
God accomplishes this again and again in a single day for us all.
What will we do in a single day to forgive the perpetrators who have destroyed our lives, to amend our lives, to share this abundant life with others, and to give God thanks for making a blessed life possible for us?