Wednesday 14 December 2022
At each fork in our day’s path,
which will we choose
as our future?
Zechariah 2:10-11
Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord. Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day, and shall be my people; and I will dwell in your midst.
Revelation 7:9
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans are generally more comfortable with what we know, with what we are familiar with, and that goes for other people as well. If we know and are familiar with others we are comfortable around them, or so we say.
There are the exceptions where we know and are all too familiar with people who abuse, lie, and take advantage of others (us included) by criminal acts and many not recognized as criminal acts. We stay very uncomfortable around them.
The internet has many ‘social media’ services that push content at us from like-minded people, so that we are comfortable with what is being done to us, as advertisements slowly scratch away at our very being, moulding us into consumers before anything else. Our interactions on ‘social media’ (those so regulated by such algorithms) are ‘heard’ only by those who already agree with us. And the ‘echo chamber’ effect takes our perspective away from us, until we can all too easily think that all good people must think as we do, even when what we think is totally disconnected from reality, fed by ‘fake news’, and wilful people seeking to increase their power and control over others. Via the internet that can be millions and even billions of people, all led like lemmings over the cliffs of reality into the seas of fear, racism, radicalism, and then on to destructive violence, small scale one on one, and large scale as these ‘enlightened lemmings’ seek to rid the world of ‘those’ people. All the while power hungry people (many just as ‘enlightened lemmings’ as their victims) manipulate economies, wars-conflicts, elections, and just about anything they can use to their ‘advantage’ to have more power, whatever the cost to other people.
God sure did create humans capable of great chaos, nearly enough to move the whole precious planet back into pre-creation chaos of non-existence, or at least void of life.
What for?
God has, even as all the ‘enlightened lemmings’ and power hungry corrupters of reality work to create chaos, also created God’s people in the middle of all this chaos. God’s people.
These are not just one stripe of a kind of people. Not one nation. Not one creed. Not one colour, race, gender, or any other category we use to delineate ourselves from ‘those others’ with whom we are uncomfortable.
God’s people come from every nation, every corner of this precious planet, every kind of person, every faith, and every category of people.
That’s pure light made of all colours of the rainbow called together, living in harmony, in peace, serving one another, bringing justice based on truth to bear for all the poor, feeding the hungry, bringing living water to the thirsty, and sending us out to proclaim God’s welcoming grace to all people.
Today, we of God’s people, will choose at the forks in our paths, to serve God, or ourselves. Which will we choose: to participate in creation’s harmony or work of chaos? Small choices mostly: tremendous consequences.