Great Feast

 

So, it's easy for me to fall into the sin of believing that the world and all people should revolve around me and my needs. It's easy for me to expect God to forgive my sin and restore me to myself again as the center of it all. It's easy for me to think that when I approach that Great Feast to come, that God would call me forward to the table in honor with all the disciples, prophets and leaders of his kingdom. That's easy... but it's a fantasy.

I'm not the center. The world and all people do not revolve around me. I don't deserve honor at the table because of myself. I'm the sinner that deserves hell for the terrible sins I have committed. I'm the evil person that thinks that everyone should do my will in my way and for me. Rather, I'm the poor person in spirit and the needy person that needs a hand out. 

And all of this drives me to acknowledge. My lowliness is a celebration of gratitude that springs from the depth of my spirit to God. When God has given so much through the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, my lowliness jumps out from the reverence that I am a sinful man. Sinful yet God gives me the knowledge of sins forgiven. My sins that have been labeled as reason to be stoned and killed. 

But... I live in the surprise that God has called me to that Great Feast as one he favors. I am one that God dies for. One that God forgives. My heart breaks and is contrite. I am humbled in the presence of God... yet somehow, for some reason he exalts me. What love! 

What love God has for me and for you as well. That even in the midst of sin and the fire of hell, God would pull me out, call me and gift me to sit at the Table. To privilege me to be able to work in the Kingdom, here in this place and forever to come.

Lord, I give you thanks that you heal on the Sabbath or any other moment of time, for when you rested on that seventh day, my heart swelled in praise to the goodness you show your people. 

You didn't leave me uncured. You saw me as precious and healed me when everyone thought the time wasn't right. Yes, you took the chance and went against the grain to heal me on a sabbath. your day of rest and my day to give thanks and praise you and you alone.

Thanks be to God... today... tomorrow... and forever!

Baptism

 Today, I think of baptism. Jesus baptism in contrast to my baptism specifically. 

Both are a death to self. Jesus died in obedience to the Father's will.

It wasn't easy. Jesus was human too. I don't think he wanted death. I don't think he wanted the suffering and the pain. But he was obedient to the will of the Father. So, Jesus faced the baptism of death.

And then came those few days in the tomb of his death. Under the water so to speak. Dead to the world, yet being changed and brought to life, resulting in resurrection.

I live a lifetime of baptisms of a sort. Each day I must die to myself. None of this life is about me. But rather through the gift of baptism, I find my death to self, under that water, and I see only a life in God as I arise from the tomb of those waters, to see the Light of God shining brightly into my now open eyes. 

It never was about me  and my life. It was always about God and the life given to me... even in my sin and death and selfishness. God displays to me a division in my life lived to me and his life lived in me. 

A huge division! My life, lived for me, will only result in my death and eternal damnation. God's life lived in me results in my death to self, and a resurrection to life with, in and for God.

Only through God can I live. 

And I can expect it to take my lifetime to die to myself and my sinfulness each and every day. 

But in the end... it's God who gives me life eternal... nothing about myself.  Wonderfully, a love that God has for me... and for you. And it's all free!

Thanks be to God!