And Doom, OR?
Friday, September 15, 2023
God’s Hammer of Judgment Looms Over Us
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OR?
Hosea 11:8-9
How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
John 12:47
I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
…
Words of Grace For Today
Through all the generations the fear of God is fomented in and among us by threatening us with God’s judgment. “In the end everyone will be judged according to what they have done, said, and thought! Therefore be good lest you end up in hell – suffering – forever!” And so go the similar admonishments and threats.
It just about scares the living daylights and joy and hope right out of each one of us. For the result is not a great effort to be good. Rather it drives us to deny our own sins, and create great facades of being good enough.
All that drives us, individually and as a community, further and further from the goodness that God created us to be for each other and all people.
Then we read these passages: God is in our midst and does not come in wrath to judge and condemn. And Jesus comes into the world not to judge it and all in it, but to save the world.
Which will this day be for us?
A day wherein we strive to be good or rather to create the illusion that we are at least good enough to avoid God’s wrath?
Or
A day wherein we rest assured of God’s saving efforts to forgive us our own sins, and set us free to extend God’s grace to others?
…
If our record is any indication then more the former than the latter.
…
If we accept God’s record as determinative then God’s forgiveness will bring us out of the former into the latter
and
life will be a miracle of goodness,
also this day.