Living in the Spirit

November 18, 2020

Scripture Reading: Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
   Worship the Lord with gladness;
   come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God.
   It is he that made us, and we are his;
   we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
   and his courts with praise.
   Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the Lord is good;
   his steadfast love endures forever,
   and his faithfulness to all generations.

The paradox of God is that if we choose to follow God, basking in God’s love and being conduits of that love to others, our lives will be full of joy and music and Shalom—peace, harmony, wholeness, and wellbeing. Why do we not want that? Why do we choose to live in discord?

The forces of evil routinely do everything possible to counter God’s righteousness and justice with the self-righteousness of the world.  I ended my book Houses Divided with the observation that, if our goal is to live in eternity in God’s kingdom, we had better start loving all God’s children because that is exactly who we will be spending time with in eternity.

I love the story of someone arriving in heaven being led down a hallway. He peeks into a room and sees rows of people sitting across from each other with food on plates before them but with spoons too long to allow them to feed themselves. They were starving. In the next room with the same setup, the people on one side of the table are reaching across to feed the person across the table with those too-long spoons*.

Prayer: Lord, free us from the bondage of the world we worship, lead us to the freedom of your love. Amen.

*Allegory of the too long spoons. See more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_long_spoons#:~:text=The%20allegory%20of%20the%20long,to%20eat%20with%20long%20spoons.&text=In%20hell%2C%20the%20people%20cannot,the%20table%20and%20are%20sated.

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 America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.