Devotional Thought for our days:
¹⁷  How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! ¹⁸  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! Psalm 139:17-18 (NLT)

304    Each day try to find a few minutes of that blessed solitude you need so much to keep your interior life going.

48 By the blessing of God, the priests in our churches pay attention to the ministry of the Word, they teach the Gospel of the blessing of Christ, and they show that the forgiveness of sins comes freely for Christ’s sake. This teaching really consoles consciences.

.When I come across the phrase, for Christ’s sake,  it makes me wonder how we hear it

The phrase is heard in our liturgies, and is used in so many theology texts.  “we are forgiven for Christ’s sake,”.

Certainly, without Jesus’ intervention, we wouldn’t be able to be forgiven. And I can’t see the Father wasting the Son’s life, He honors the sacrifice, and Christ’s merit is applied to our lives, as sin is separated from the sinner, and we are found to be righteous without it.

Yet, when I hear we are forgiven for Christ’s sake, there is a part of me that hears it negatively, as if there is no worth God finds in us.  As if the cross and all the suffering was simply God resigning Himself to save us, to deal with His frustration.  As if His attitude was, “you screwed up again, I suppose I have to save you, okay. I’ll do it, but only because of Jesus.”

That interpretation doesn’t coincide with how God is revealed in the Old Testament or the New.  Saving us is not something He reluctantly does, even as He is frustrated beyond frustration.

This is why we need to spend some time in solitude each day, why we need to be concerned about what St. Josemaria calls our interior life.  The place where we know God is with us, where we can hear HIs voice and know we are safe. We need to know He’s found us,  and we can relax, and listen

We need to hear God’s voice, we need to grow to where we can join the place the psalmist is at when he speaks of God’s thoughts about him. ,

About you.

About me.

To understand that God thinks about us leads us to realize how much He does care about us and sent Jesus to save us.  To think that is not just a passing thought, but that God has thought about us since He created us.  His thoughts are beyond our ability to count, yeah that makes sense.  Clarifying that you were on God’s mind more times that you can count is, well I just have words for that concept.

He loves us that much…

Wow…

Yes, it is because of Christ’s coming that we can know this, that we can be counted holy, yet that just isn’t our goal, it is the Father’s desire.

What an amazing thought.

What an amazing God!

Escriva, Josemaria. The Way (Kindle Locations 789-791). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Tappert, Theodore G., ed. The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959. Print