Thursday, June 8, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God’s glory and God’s gifts
Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one! You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
This first and greatest of all the commandments is number one on the tablets also:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Good morning Jesus.” Most mornings I wake up, sit on the side of the bed, sing the doxology and say the Lord’s Prayer. I notice the first part of the “Our Father” are about God’s glory:
You are my father
You live in heaven
Your name is holy
Let your kingdom come to earth
Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
And the second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Then the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is about God’s gifts. So that we will have what we need to love ourselves and henceforth others:
Give us food and drink
Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others
Turn our bodies away from evil temptations, and deliver us when we turn toward them anyway
The scribe spoke up to Jesus, “Well said, teacher. You are right. These (loves) are worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
The Lord’s Prayer ends not with supplications but with praise. We will fail in all our efforts to love when we stop short of complete reliance on God:
Because the kingdom belongs only to you, Lord
All the power in the universe is yours
We bow down and give you glory, Lord
Always we have done this and always we will, into the future forever
And Jesus saw that this scribe answered with understanding, and he said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
If I had been that scribe I’d have felt pretty good, hearing that from Jesus. But getting that little way from here to there, what is that “not far”? should be my next question. It would be burning in my chest, I think.
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Jesus leaves the scribe, and me, to figure out what the “not far” is. My friend Thomas and I were talking through Revelation 13 yesterday. “The beast opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and dwelling place and those who live in heaven.”
What happens when we “take the name of God in vain,” blaspheme God, slander him?
One thing is that we lose our sense of God as separate and holy. We drag him down into the crowd. He becomes part of our world, rather than us being part of His.
Then eventually, we crucify him.
And perhaps this happens subtly when I think I’m already in God’s kingdom, but there is still a “not far” to go.
The “not far” is about my daily, moment by moment choice to be a creature and to honor God for who He is, my creator.
I can say it once. But I must say it again and again.
They said together, “Amen, amen,” and went to bed for the night.
(Tobit 6-8, Psalm 128, 2 Tim 1, Mark 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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