Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Urgent Question
Gracious and Compassionate
If there’s a word with a bad rap, it’s the word repent. That word can conjure up images of an angry prophet-like, old man scowling and pointing at people while bellowing the word REPENT! Or maybe that’s just the imagery that comes up for me. The underlying concept of a change of heart is wrapped up in that impression. However, I don’t find the picture in the Bible that when you do turn you will face certain wrath.
Continue readingKind Words
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
–Mother Teresa
Wisdom
Love
people
as yourself
Love the lord God
with all your heart, strength and understanding.
On these two commandments the whole law hangs,
he told the man
who asked which
law was
best.
by Melisa Blankenship
Written in the form of Mirrored Tetractys
(1,2,3,4,10,10,4,3,2,1)
Reconciliation
2 Corinthians 5:17-18 “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
When my husband and I start getting excited about some new endeavor, we get carried away talking about the plans. At some point one of us quotes a one liner from the movie True Stories, “I personally believe I can see Fort Worth from here.” It’s kind of obscure as far as jokes go, but we’re poking fun at the way our imagination wanders—as though saying what we’ll do makes it so. Unlike this quip, these verses in 2 Corinthians say we are something new. What we had been is now gone. This is an unbelievable claim! Continue reading
Posted in Devotions. Tagged with 2 corinthians, bible, christianity, forgiveness, humility, reconciliation, vulnerability.
Faithfulness
You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. Galatians 5:4-6
By faith we wait for the hope of righteousness. When I think of faithfulness I usually think of the ways I’m not faithful. For some reason the word immediately draws my attention away from the concept of grace to the opposite concept–my failures. This reveals that I have a faulty idea of what faithfulness is, because these verses are saying we do not become justified by works, but the only thing that matters is faith working itself out in love. Continue reading
Posted in Devotions. Tagged with bible, christianity, faith, faithfulness, galatians, grace, hope, jesus, transformation.