Tuesday, October 18, 2022
While We Are In The Dark In The Cold, Leafless Bowels of the Forests of Life,
Up Top,
God’s Glory Still Shines,
Beckoning Us to Rise Up And Love One Another
As God Loves Us.
First Samuel 2:6
The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
Revelation 1:8
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Words of Grace For Today
I don’t think of God killing, just bringing to life, not of bringing us down to Sheol (hell as it is), just raising us up out of the hell we get ourselves into.
There’s a plaque I saw once in a furniture store. Plaques with platitudes usually do not catch my attention but this one did:
Karma, I have a list of people you seem to have missed.
Well, I suppose we all might have such a list, and the idea that we can influence karma, well, that’s a wild idea.
But we pray to God constantly.
So can we provide that same list to God and ask God to do the killing stuff with the list?
Surely we can acknowledge (well most of us do, or at least many, well maybe it’s just some of us nowadays) that God is the almighty, the Alpha and the Omega, beginning and end. God as the bringer of life as well as death certainly belongs with that. So yes, God hears our prayers and answers them. And yes God could take that list and kill ‘em all off.
Why would God?
To please our blood-thirst or hunger for revenge? That is not our God, not at all, not at all.
God believes in every single one of us frail, broken, sinful creatures, enough to free us again and again from our sin so that we might live abundant lives (which means we understand that God created us to provide the best life possible to other people, and that we act accordingly.)
So our task with that list of ours is to see if we can give them the same kind of Grace that God extends to us.
It’s another day of challenges, dealing with others’ and our own brokenness, failings, and sinfulness.
Let us find the peace that God offers, so that we can forgive and give renewed life to those who sin against us.
…
Still, God, can we review my karma list sometime to see if just perhaps you can bring a few of those people their just desserts. Wouldn’t want them to miss out on the end of the feast now would we?
(God save us all.)