Into And Around Us
Thursday, November 16, 2023
For Our Darkest Times,
God Works the Greatest Wonders
Light in our Nights of Dread.
Jeremiah 32:40
I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me.
1 John 4:9
God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
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Words of Grace For Today
If we live thinking God does not matter, doing neither good nor bad, then our days will be more than dark. They will be desperately hopeless.
So that we do not fall into that despair, God works many wonders in and around us, in every generation.
Jeremiah reports that God makes a new covenant, an everlasting covenant (one that is valid still today!), so that God will always do good for us, and so that we will fear God and not turn from him.
Luther put it well that fear alone of God is miserable; one needs also the love of God so that one fears and loves God in all things.
Even when we have feared and loved God most of our lives there is no guarantee that we will be fully assured of God’s love in the next moment, facing the next awful challenges, challenges that threaten our very lives and the lives of those we love.
So that even then we can remember God’s good works for us, God sent Jesus to live among us, to live out a story that we tell even today, and a story that will be told until there are no more humans to tell it: Jesus came to live, teach, heal, and die for us in order to demonstrate blatantly how much God loves us.
When we remember how much God loves us then we can also remember to love God,
and then life is not so miserable,
for there is hope
for tomorrow
and beyond.