Living in the Spirit
September 2, 2014

Scripture Reading: Exodus 12:1-14

 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. — Exodus 12:12

A truck transporting a boxcar sized container hit a too-low bridge knocking the container off onto a pickup truck whose driver was killed instantly. A doctor doing his life’s work in Africa contracts the deadly Ebola virus and dies. A plague moves over Egypt killing all the first born even among the animal. John Donne perhaps said it best in his Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Good or evil, we all face the same reality of death and the same uncertainty of time and circumstance. Those of us who call ourselves Christian face it with a different perspective than those without a relationship with God. For we know that our redeemer lives even though he died on a cross. It disturbs me to think that God would kill all those Egyptians even though they had ample opportunity to free the Israelites and did not. I certainly do not believe that God wants the children of Gaza or Israel to die in onslaughts of mortars and missiles or for that matter the children of Syria or Ukraine or anyplace else. I do know that God wants us to do all that we can to introduce the entire world to his ways of love and to live those ways ourselves. When Love ultimately rules, death will die.

Prayer: Lord make us instruments of your love. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.