What I Know

This is a reply I made to someone's post over in LiveJournal. I liked it.

Our puny little brains have no chance of understanding the totality of what God is. There are so many things that don't "make sense" to my human mind, the seeming contradictions that I have no hope of reconciling, but that I all put under the heading of "his ways are not mine." And how close are his ways to mine? Only about "as far as the heavens are above the earth."

Faith & works. Justice & mercy. Sovereignty & free will.

And then there is God's vastness & God's care. I don't understand how it can be true that I am dust and my life is just a vapor, yet also that The Lord catches every one of my tears -- and cries them with me.

I just know that it's true.

Justice

In Romans 13, Paul has some interesting things to say about this topic. There seems to be a difference between individuals carrying out justice (i.e., "vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord"), and governments carrying out justice. Paul seems to okay the carrying out of justice by governmental authorities, who have been appointed by God. But then . . . what about the person who actually carries out (or authorizes) the governmental action? Is this person under the strictures of the governmental authority or of the individual? I am sure God knows the answer to this, but I'm at a bit of a loss.

One of the many things about the Lord that causes my head to spin when I think too much about it.

Epiphany / Twelfth Night

I am attempting to integrate some aspects of the Church Calendar into my devotions for this year. This is a stretch for someone who: a) never attended church until he was 17; and b) spent the next 20+ years in the ritual-less-ness of the Evangelical world.

So I note that today is Epiphany, celebrating the arrival of the Magi, and by extent the revelation of the Christ to Gentiles. As one, that is worth celebrating.

A Martin Luther sermon on the topic makes note of the message inherent in the King of Kings revealing himself to the lowest of the low: "It is both a terrifying and consoling [tale]: terrifying to the great and wise, the self-satisfied and the mighty, because they all reject Christ; consoling to the humble and despised, because to them alone Christ is revealed."

Resolved

In reflecting on the last few years, I can now dub 2005 as the year of "Stress and Struggle" and 2006 as one of "Recovery and Restoration."

Instead of waiting to decide what 2007 was after the fact, I am going to now declare my intention to make this a year of "Productivity and Progress."

May it be so.