“How can you go on believing, from generation to generation, that one day God will come and take charge? Answer: you tell the story, you sing the songs, and your keep celebrating God’s victory, even though it keeps on not happening. Since Jesus himself seems to have deliberately chosen the Exodus story, the Passover story, as the setting for the carefully staged climax to his own public career, it’s important that we think for a moment about the seven great features of this story, which all first-century Jews would have known in their bones.” (“Re-Living the Exodus”,  Simply Jesus,  N. T. Wright, p. 63)

How do WE keep our hopes up when all seems to be falling apart around us? How do WE continue to trust that G-d will, one day come back to make all things right in a world where so much seems to be wrong? We keep our trust and hope firmly on G-d’s promises because the scriptures tell us that G-d will one day make things right. Paul says, in his letter to the church in Ephesus:

“…here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!  All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go.” (Ephesians 3:8-12)

Like I said in my last devotion, we need to be more involved in the life of civil leadership and government—and in the life of the church. The more we make the voices of concerned Christians known, the more we can have influence in the decisions that are being made—both in our churches, and in our society. Together we can make known what G-d has in mind for all of creation—the redemption of all.

Pastor Dave

“The Jews of Jesus’ day believed that their God made the world and that he had remained in charge of it. They didn’t understand, any more than we do, why a world made by a good God would somehow go wrong, but clearly that had happened. The signs were all there: broken bodies, broken lives, broken systems, broken countries. The whole thing needed fixing, needing mending, needed to be put right. And the Jewish people believed that they, the family of Abraham, were part of the answer, part of the mending operation, part of the putting-right plan.” (“What Went Wrong?”,  Simply Jesus,  N. T. Wright, p. 61)

The signs of trouble around our world are all there, at least I think so—the signs that so much of our country has gone wrong, with so many broken bodies, broken spirits, broken lives and broken systems. Why have things gone so wrong in so many places? Just today I was watching the news and heard how British Prime Minister Theresa May was fighting to save her Brexit deal — and her job after a chaotic day of government resignations and demands for her to stand down. It was an implosion you could watch on television. And then there are the continuing fires in California that have left so many people with only ashes instead of homes, and three hundred people still missing and feared dead. Why are we experiencing so many heart-breaking and heart-wrenching episodes of loss of life, limb and leadership? The easy answer is this: we are broken people looking to leaders who we hope have answers for us—but realistically speaking they are also broken people. G-d is in charge of all things—but G-d is not pulling the strings on our actions and behaviors like a puppet-master with his marionette. If we want more leadership from G-d, then we need to pray for ourselves, our leaders, and our care for creation—praying that we all listen more to G-d’s words. We need to become involved more in the care of creation, and letting our leaders know that we are watching them, and care about the decisions they make. And we need to trust that G-d is ultimately in control—with an ultimate plan in mind for redeeming us all.

Pastor Dave