Search This Blog

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Redemption



I might be getting ahead of myself as I dive back into the attributes of God for Thursday Theology.  I fully intend to write more about who God is, because I think this is important, but as I was working through Sacred Ordinary Days, this morning, I was struck by a "what God does" moment.  Interestingly, I think humanity has been trying to separate the concepts of who we are and what we do for a very long time.  There is some good that comes from that.  Life as a number or a position title really stinks.  But I think there is also value in recognizing that who we are often does, indeed, inform what we do.

Psalm 103:1-5 "Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.  Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s" (NIV).

God redeems.

God redeems and redeems and redeems.

God calls us to help in redemption.

And then God redeems, some more.

It was not lost on me that, in my reading today, there was a theme of humility and testing.  It seems that in order for redemption to take place, there must be something (or someone) to redeem.  If I'm honest, I would like redemption to be sparkly and beautiful and easy.  It's not.  Sometimes it seems like we want to live in fairy tales, but the truth is, we really just want the happy endings.  If you have ever actually read or watched a fairy tale (especially in its original form), you know there is a great deal of peril involved.  And such is life.

Sometimes life is overwhelming.  We can't do it on our own, friends, but we can do it.  We're not on our own.

Psalm 115:1 "Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness" (NIV).

L.

No comments:

Post a Comment