Thursday, March 30, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
I created you to …
If I should say I do not know Him I would be like you, a liar. Whoever keeps my word will never taste death. Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.
Jesus spoke out in strength, assuring his listeners that what they heard from him was true. Their response must have disappointed him.
Now we know that you are possessed. And they picked up stones to kill him, but Jesus went out of the temple area and away from them.
Jesus wept for Jerusalem, for the future of those unbelievers and their children, watching them run for the mountains unable even to nurse their babies in their haste. Jesus’ anger collapsed into deep grief, as he mirrored his Father’s feelings while he walked the earth. So much sadness. Unholy unholy, nothing high and lifted up, only brought low and dragged in the mud.
I never imagined it would be much fun being God, watching us, his children, cut from his own cloth and in his image, make a mess of things. Jesus portrays his Father as not only angry, but brokenhearted. The Pharisees, like many of us, saw only God’s wrath and didn’t see through it to the sadness.
You do not know him, but I know him.
In a class I taught for a few years called “Family Life Skills,” the author Paul Hegstrom described an emotional “funnel system.” Feelings that drain adrenalin (like fear, loneliness, helplessness, disappointment, fear and betrayal) funnel into ANGER, which increases adrenalin flow. Adrenalin junkies are often rage-aholics also, and it is very difficult for them to acknowledge or enter their own vulnerability and weakness. Surrendering to God is out of the question.
But surrendering to God closes down nothing in me. In fact, it’s the only way for me to open, bloom, flourish, grow. Let God speak:
A New Creation by Clarence Heller
I didn’t create you to be grateful.
I didn’t create you to praise me.
I didn’t create you to be my hands to serve others
or to fix what’s wrong in this world.
I created you to share myself.
I cannot be contained.
I cannot be limited.
I created you to enter into the mystery
of life, of living, of me.
I created you as part of the beauty of the universe
and to carry in your soul the essence of all that is.
You have the freedom to claim your essence as mine,
to share in the life that is me.
And you have the freedom to say no,
or not yet, or not so much.
You have, and you will
(remember I know you as well as I know myself).
So let us continue this journey
with the next steps of patience and kindness –
with each other,
with ourselves.
When Abram prostrated himself, God spoke. “You are to become the father of a host of nations. No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham. I will render you exceedingly fertile.
The earth’s population reached eight billion on November 15, 2022, according to the United Nations. Our IQ (intelligence quotient) is growing. But our EQ (emotional quotient) is being quenched. And our SQ (spiritual quotient) often seems non-existent. How to still be hopeful for the future?
As we have been taught always and forever:
Look to the Lord in his strength, seek to serve him constantly. Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought, his portents, and the judgements he has uttered. For the Lord remembers his covenant forever.
(Genesis 17, Psalm 105, Psalm 95, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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