God, Have mercy on us!

Devotional Thought of the Day
¹⁸  And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. ¹⁹  For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. ²⁰  So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” ²¹  For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 (NLT)

669      The co-redeeming—eternal!—efficacy of our lives can only become real with humility, passing unnoticed, so that others can discover Him.

Recently, the president of the United States was reported to have commented with harsh language about several countries.  There is no doubt the phrasing he used was wrong.  But there is also no doubt that those countries, much like our own, are broken.

Sin does that, and in some places, the sin is more evident to us, and to others, our sin is much more evident than theirs.

But rather than focus on the brokenness, both those backing our president and those opposing out president focus n the words of the message.  I would not say the reason they d this is conscious and deliberate, but in focusing on the President’s phrasing, they are able to forget about the real problems in those countries and our own.

The brokenness, the sin that dominates our culture, whether it is corruption, or theft, or murder.

We would rather get mad, or get defensive about the word order than doing something about it

And these places, (including the USA) continue in their brokenness. And very few do anything about the problems.  Which, in and of itself, is just as sinful, just as corrupt, and just as wrong.

St Josemaria wrote about the humility required to become effective, to have a real meaning to our lives.  He talks about it from the point of our not caring about the credit we could receive, but rather being satisfied with only one goal, seeing people see God’s love for them.  It doesn’t matter if I am the man baptizing them, or whether it is my Catholic priest or Methodist pastor friend.  It doesn’t matter if it is my sermon that opens someone eyes to God’s love, or someone else’s.

All that matters is that they know God’s love and mercy.  As they do, they will be changed by God, and their little area of the world will be filled with less skubala. (that’s is crap in Greek)

But humility doesn’t start with not caring who gets the credit.  If it does, it could just be a nice excuse for apathy, and not working in the ministry God gave us all, the ministry of pleading with people to be reconciled.

Humility is found in our own reconciliation, in realizing the crap that we’ve got ourselves into, and that on Christ can reconcile us with the Father. He saved us from our crappy life, full of sin, and cleaned us up, and gave us life.  As he doesn’t in just about every country in this world.

And He does it through us, the people He reconciled.

He shares this incredible work with us and makes it happen.

As we simply point to the cross and the empty tomb and invite people to know that is all for them. For Christ would unity with them there, as He did with us.

This is our hope, this is our joy, this is who we are meant ot be, working with people to see their lives change, and then to rejoice and see that every day.  This is what makes our lives and communities a little less crappy…. and will do the same for the world.

The love of God, the power of God that would reconcile everything back to Him.

So rejoice in what God has done and is doing in your life, and pray for those who need reconciliation, and as you can, plead with them to let God do what God does… and then rejoice some more, in awe that God does work, and works through you!

AMEN!

Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 2460-2462). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.