Today marks the end of the looooonnnnngggg reading of Job in the One Year Bible. My conclusions:
11/8 Readings from the One Year Bible Online
Today’s reading from the Psalms illustrates how God’s wrath always lives in tension with God’s grace.
The Israelites had earned God’s wrath through their idolatry. Once they entered into the promised land they turned their backs on God and embraced the false gods and pagan rituals of their new found neighbors. As you can tell from the reading, God was not pleased…
40 That is why the Lord’s anger burned against his people,
and he abhorred his own special possession.
41 He handed them over to pagan nations,
and they were ruled by those who hated them.
42 Their enemies crushed them
and brought them under their cruel power.
And yet, despite their rejection of God for the phony gods of their neighbors, God showed them grace…
44 Even so, he pitied them in their distress
and listened to their cries.
45 He remembered his covenant with them
and relented because of his unfailing love.
46 He even caused their captors
to treat them with kindness.
That’s the way it is with God. Wrath living in tension with grace.
God reminds me of good parents. Good parents hold their children accountable for their misdeeds. They don’t let them get away with anything! At the same time, good parents also withhold the full measure of wrath they have the potential of inflicting. They show grace. The former is a demonstration of accountability. The latter, a demonstration of grace. The combination is a demonstration of how God loves us.
Prayer: Thank you God for demonstrating your love for us by holding us accountable AND showing us grace. Help us to demonstrate our love for others by striking the same balance for them. Amen.
11/7 Readings from the One Year Bible Online
6 Like our ancestors, we have sinned.
We have done wrong! We have acted wickedly!
7 Our ancestors in Egypt
were not impressed by the Lord’s miraculous deeds.
They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them.
Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea.[a]
8 Even so, he saved them—
to defend the honor of his name
and to demonstrate his mighty power.
This passage from Psalm 106 captures the essence our relationships with God:
For our part; we are a mess. We have sinned, done wrong, and acted wickedly, just like our parents did, and our parents’ parents, and all our ancestors before them. Like the Egyptians, we are quick to forget (if we notice at all) all the miracles God does in our lives. Each infection that comes and then miraculously goes. The miraculous birth of children. The miraculous beat of our hearts. All gifts from God – and not one of them deserved. Like our distant ancestors mentioned in the Psalm, we are rarely if ever impressed by God’s miraculous deeds, and when we do notice them, we are quick to forget.
God, on the other hand, has saved us. Yes, even us. We who overlook God’s miracles. We who are quick to forget all God has done for us. We who do wrong by mistreating one another. The fact that God continues to deliver miraculous blessing to us in spite of our shortcomings is grace, and God has been showing grace to humanity since the beginning of time. Thank God for it, because if my eternal wellbeing depended on my good behavior and my keen eye for God’s miraculous work around me – I’d be in an eternal “world of hurt.” How about you?