September 26, 2013 or Day 263
Jeremiah 52!; Psalm 66; 1 Peter 4
Yeah. We have finally finished Jeremiah. Is anyone else relieved? I don’t mind telling you, I am. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like had we had a little matriarchal influence in a Jesus Christ kind of way six centuries earlier. Bob Pritchard, historian, great teacher and priest at Virginia Theological Seminary, said in chapel one day when I was there as a seminarian, “Some texts in the Hebrew scripture make us want to run to the gospel”. Yet, I must admit, God may be saying, “Not so fast. Let’s just take a minute and try to see things from Jeremiah’s point of view now that we’re finally at the end of that book”. Throughout all, we were warned of what befalls humankind when we turn away from our Creator, our guide, our source of light and life and love. Our prophet Jeremiah gave fair warning to be steadfast in following God. And few listened. Would that they would have known about Jesus Christ.
Thank God, we do know about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, about our triune God. And, because we know, we realize our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, is closer than breath and is the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’. It goes beyond gratitude. It brings one to tears. “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals” the psalmist declares. “Blessed be God because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me”. How can we help, then, but to see God in one another? This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye-Pollyanna perspective. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ and one in which we are called to uphold and declare. May we pray for the grace to shut out anything that would take our eyes from that vision. “…though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.”
Wendy Tobias
St. Joseph’s, Boynton Beach
Jeremiah 52!; Psalm 66; 1 Peter 4
Yeah. We have finally finished Jeremiah. Is anyone else relieved? I don’t mind telling you, I am. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like had we had a little matriarchal influence in a Jesus Christ kind of way six centuries earlier. Bob Pritchard, historian, great teacher and priest at Virginia Theological Seminary, said in chapel one day when I was there as a seminarian, “Some texts in the Hebrew scripture make us want to run to the gospel”. Yet, I must admit, God may be saying, “Not so fast. Let’s just take a minute and try to see things from Jeremiah’s point of view now that we’re finally at the end of that book”. Throughout all, we were warned of what befalls humankind when we turn away from our Creator, our guide, our source of light and life and love. Our prophet Jeremiah gave fair warning to be steadfast in following God. And few listened. Would that they would have known about Jesus Christ.
Thank God, we do know about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, about our triune God. And, because we know, we realize our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, is closer than breath and is the one in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’. It goes beyond gratitude. It brings one to tears. “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals” the psalmist declares. “Blessed be God because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me”. How can we help, then, but to see God in one another? This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye-Pollyanna perspective. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ and one in which we are called to uphold and declare. May we pray for the grace to shut out anything that would take our eyes from that vision. “…though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.”
Wendy Tobias
St. Joseph’s, Boynton Beach
RSS Feed