Today's Word
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Our Lord is so good, He grants us many blessings. We can see Him in the daily course of events, in our homes, our jobs, our lives. I pray that these words help you to grow in your faith and recognize His hand in even the most mundane circumstances.
The picture to the right is of a Celtic Chapel located in Cornwall England. This building is approximately 1700 years old, and contains a holy well known for its healing powers.
(Click for enlarged)
“Have mercy on me, God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions. My sin is constantly before me. Against you, and you only, I have sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight, so you may be proved right when you speak, and justified when you judge. Behold, I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, that the bones which you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all of my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Don’t throw me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit.” Psalm 51:1-12, WEB
I was driving down the highway one day when a plastic shopping bag flew into my car and got caught on my side mirror. I thought it would blow off on its own, but it was stuck there by the force of the wind. I considered opening my window to pull it off, but it was whipping violently, so trying would be more dangerous. It wasn’t a distraction, just an annoyance. I decided to wait until I stopped, but it fell off as I slowed down, which meant it was free to fly into someone else’s car.
We joke about the bright yellow Dollar General bags. The small-town discount store has popped up everywhere in the past few years, sometimes in the strangest, most out of the way places. How do they get there? DG bags are DG store seeds! If a DG bag lands in an open field, there will be a brand-new store in a week. We carried a DG bag in our car during one road trip, thinking that we should “plant” it in a place where there seems to be no place for the locals to shop. We wouldn’t have, of course, but it made us laugh numerous times as we were driving in sparsely populated places in Texas. I joke about letting the bags go, but those plastic bags can be a real problem and an eyesore.
It is amazing how those bags can catch the wind and fly for miles until they get caught on something like my car or a tree branch. They look almost graceful dancing in the wind, but they are dangerous. I was lucky, but those bags can cause accidents if they get caught in a way that blocks a driver’s view. They can end up in jet engines. They can kill wildlife. I have seen fields filled with all sorts of plastic things caught on tree branches and chicken wire fences. The breeze blows them constantly and they eventually become ripped and ragged. I often wonder how there could be so many bags in one place. It is possible that the winds just blow in a pattern that allows them to settle in those places or the fact that there are so many trees in the way of the prevailing winds.
I don’t know how the bags escape. They are so lightweight that they are easily caught in the wind pushed high and far so quickly that it is impossible to get them back. Unfortunately, few of us have the time or the means to catch them, so we let them go. We don’t bother running after a loose bag, leaving it to be someone else’s problem. Most of them are just an ugly nuisance, but even just one of many that causes an accident or kills a critter is one too many. We just drive by, shaking our heads at the irresponsible person who let those bags fly, but few of us would even consider collecting and disposing them properly. Who has the time to worry about a few bags on the side of the road?
Lent is a time when we look deeply into our lives, realizing that our sin is much like the bags that get caught in the trees and fences at the sides of the roads. Most of our sin is an ugly nuisance, but we are capable of sin that is dangerous. We don’t know how it became part of our life. We fail to resist the actions and inactions of others, so sin grabs a hold of some part of us. It might even appear to have grace and beauty, but it is ugly and dangerous, especially when our sin affects others. And all sin affects others, even when it doesn’t seem so. As Christians, we are called to help one another, to be there for our brothers and sisters, so that our sin does not continue to blow in the breeze causing our lives to become ripped and ragged. Like those bags, if we let sin go, everything becomes worse as time goes on
Lent is a time for contemplating our sinfulness, and when we follow Lenten disciplines in the company of other Christians it is a time for helping one another clean up our fields. Are we ignoring the problems? Are we too lazy to find a way to help? Do we refuse to cross those fences that our fellow Christians have put up to keep us out of their business? Are we building fences so that others cannot help us? Let us seek God’s help to work together to clean up our fields, sharing God’s mercy and grace and cleansing, so that by Easter our lives will look more like a beautiful meadow of wildflowers than an ugly field of garbage.
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“But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice and spoke out to them, ‘Men of Israel, hear these words! Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, even as you yourselves know, him, being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed; whom God raised up, having freed him from the agony of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it. For David says concerning him, “I saw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced. Moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope, because you will not leave my soul in Hades, neither will you allow your Holy One to see decay. You made known to me the ways of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence.” Brothers, I may tell you freely of the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he foreseeing this, spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul wasn’t left in Hades,[c] and his flesh didn’t see decay. This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses.’” Acts 2:14a, 22-32, WEB
Today is the first day of Spring. It has been a crazy time weatherwise for many places across the country. I saw a post from one town that had high temps in the afternoon and snow at night. We are dealing with extreme wind, drought, and wildfire warnings. Other places have experienced tornadoes and severe storms with too much rain. One commentor under a weather post said, “This is crazy, it has never been like this!” With the blood red moon lunar eclipse the other night, and everything that is happening in the world, some people believe that this is the time Jesus foretold when “There will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” The weather person said, “It’s March, this is normal.” Weather in March is often crazy, this is why we have the saying, “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” It is just hard for us to see “normal” in such craziness, especially when it is hitting us personally.
We are beginning to see signs of spring around our city. I longingly wait through winter for this time of renewal, but it is not pleasant when the weather is so crazy. The weather person reported that the craziness is simply the battle of the seasons. Nature is in the midst of a mood swing, which happens every year, when different weather systems clashes. Some years it hits us harder than others. Sadly, there are many around the country who are getting hit over and over again. Just as they clean up from one storm, another hits. I’m sure many people are frustrated and tired. It is ridiculous and seems like it is outside the norm. Yet, if you look at history, you’ll see there have been eras that have experienced similar craziness. It might not be “normal,” but it isn’t out of the norm.
We are in Lent, considering what Jesus did for us. His story is ridiculous. It is no wonder that many people consider it out of the norm, little more than a fairy tale. Much of what we know about Jesus is beyond scientific explanation, beyond reason, physically impossible. That God could, or would, become incarnate to live among men and then live to die is outrageous. It is not normal. Some might even say it is a lie. There are those in the past two thousand years who have tried to justify traditional Christian beliefs by claiming it was a purely spiritual experience. For them, bodily aspects of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, do not seem important. We cannot touch, hear, or see Jesus in the flesh, so it is the Spirit through which we know and experience God.
However, our faith is founded in the reality of what Jesus did and what God did through Jesus. There are those who would prefer to reduce Jesus to little more than a rabbi, teacher, and example by which we are called to live. While He was those things, He was also much more. He was the Messiah. Though He did not live up to the hope of what the people in His day expected, He did accomplish the work that God foreordained.
Peter makes it very clear that what happened to Jesus, the things that they witnessed firsthand, were exactly what God had planned. Though He was crucified at the hands of human beings, it happened according to God’s word. Jesus went to the cross by God’s hand so that His plan for salvation could be completed. There are those who say that the New Testament writers give us the impression that the Jews were at fault for the death of Jesus because the writers feared retribution from the Romans. However, in this speech, Peter lays the responsibility on both the Jews and the Romans (those outside the Law), but ultimately the responsibility belongs to God. All that they did, they did because God planned it to be done.
Peter describes David as a prophet because he foresaw the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Referring back to the Psalm, Peter showed how the evidence of the things that they had seen and experienced with Jesus lined up with the things the prophet King David had foretold. David and Peter were not speaking about purely spiritual things. David died and was buried, and his tomb still existed in that day. Jesus, however, died but was no longer buried. Jesus was the promised King, greater than King David because He was the Messiah, the promised One of God. His body would not stay in the ground and it would not decompose as David s did.
Peter states emphatically that they were witnesses to these things; we believe based on their witness. Though we cannot experience the flesh of Jesus as they did, though we can’t see Him or touch Him or hear Him as they did, we can believe based on their testimony. Everything about Jesus is beyond the norm, it is crazy enough to seem to be nothing but a fairytale, but to reduce the Resurrection of Jesus to something purely spiritual diminishes the witness of Peter and the others. It also diminishes Jesus to less than was promised by God through His prophets. It may seem ridiculous to our modern human sensibilities, but it as God intended. Jesus lived, died, and rose again by God’s hand and plan for our sake. This “fairytale” grants us life that we would never know without Him. Though our lives may seem chaotic on this first day of spring, we know that the promise of springtime, the renewal we have in Christ Jesus, is coming and is now for those who believe.
The following links provide some specially chosen scripture that tell the stories of the Birth and Passion of our Lord as Savior Jesus Christ, as well as a fictional perspective of the Crucifixion. Spend time in God's Word, read about His life and learn of the wonderful gifts He has for you. Know Jesus Christ and honor Him today. Thanks be to God.
The Story of our Savior's Passion
The Crucifixion, a fictional perspective
When researching, I use several versions of the bible, including the New International Version and English Standard Version. Due to copyright restrictions, I have not included quotes for the scriptures on some of the archives, but highly encourage you to open your own bibles to read the scripture passages for yourselves. Where scripture is quoted, it is usually the American Standard Version or World English Bible which belong to the public domain. Any other versions used in quotes are identified.
The devotion posted on Wednesday is based on the Lectionary texts used by millions of Christians each Sunday. The Lectionary consists of four texts: an Old Testament passage, a Psalm, a passage from one of the Epistles and a Gospel text and follows the church calendar. Archives for these writings are found at Midweek Oasis.
You are welcome to use these words to share the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. Please remember to give credit to the Author who has given you these gifts, and keep in remembrance the vessel which He used to bring them to you. We pray that this site may be a blessing to you and anyone with whom you've shared it. Peggy Hoppes
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