December 2, 2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1.27)

“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6.34)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

When Christy Lane wrote and sang “One Day at a Time,” it is with this passage of scripture mentioned above from Matthew 6.34 which she had in mind. We are given a lifetime on earth and in an afterlife. We do not know the day nor the hour of our arrival nor of our departure. But, bathed in God’s mercy, grace and love we are covered for an eternity. The choice is clearly left to us. If God’s will be done, then we abide in the midst of the prayer which Jesus taught to His disciples saying “Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s will being done has often been portrayed as a prescripted journey through the highs, lows, trials, tribulations, joys, celebrations, valleys of the shadow of death, the transitory moment of death like a door opening to a new horizon and then life after death. It is easy, as I see, to believe this because then we have taken the gift of freewill bestowed on every human beings out of the equation. Just blame God for hardships and victories (although God usually only gets the blame and never the acclaim.) But, I see God’s will be done in a different light. As I proposed a few days ago, “Righteousness is living an unbroken life in the midst of a broken world.” It is exactly what Jesus came to do and what Jesus did during His thirty-three years of life on earth as He lived it in Heaven.

The “how,” mind you, was not a prescripted and pre-determinded venture apart from the fact that Jesus was going to have to be the penultimate sacrifice to appropriate the promise of everlasting life with the Father in the heavenly realm to overwhelm the debt of sin we all owe to the One who made us, blessed us and called us to be His own. As Paul declared, “He who was without sin because sin for us so that by His death we might have the righteousness of God which bears eternal life.” (2 Corinthians 5.21) That was an inevitable reality which Jesus knew as the Godhead of truth when humanity was created and endowed with the gift of freewill. It is the difficult decision of making authentic love the unique experience of every person. In order for love to be love it must be freely given without condition. It must be freely engaged with the hope that its true reality will be discovered in loving others in the same way. It must be truly trusted to bear the fruit of life’s victory over death which comes in “so loving another that you are willing to lay down your life for their sake.” Yet, without that hint of tomorrow’s glorious reward, the heart and mind of humanity limits its understanding to the world in which it lives. It covers itself with the poverty of self-importance and self-evidence and the condition of works make an eternal future for one’s self and for others as collateral benefit. Works do not make righteous consequences unless they are works which rise up out of one’s righteousness born of God. Such works are the evidence of authentic love poured out on a daily basis with a singular eye on the only future we would desire for ourselves and one another. What is that future? It is to dwell in the House of the Lord forever. It is what David saw as the joy of completion being a lamb of God in the flock of God’s keeping with God as the Great Shepherd. It is what we ought to see as well!

Now, let’s return to this singular verse of teaching which stands in the midst of “don’t worry.” Jesus urges His listeners to “not worry about tomorrow.” If we stop and listen to what Jesus said, we might hear Him objective “tomorrow” as if it were something we could actually do something about. It treats “tomorrow” as a living entity which we would believe our love for it, and thus for ourselves in it, could make it better. Why does tomorrow need to be better? Because, I think, we see “today” as not being so good. We see “tomorrow” as the consequence of “today.” We have this idea that taking on tomorrow preemptively today will make a better today and tomorrow better than it could have been. It is true. In part, it is true that tomorrow is a consequence of today when we see it in that “step by step” journey instead of its final destination and reward. Jesus was able to “not worry,” though He was troubled by His impending death because His humanity was as strong as His divinity. In the Garden, His two natures quarrelled with each other. Fortunately, as it should be for all of us, His divine nature willed out. We know this because of His prayer in the Garden resigning Himself in the flesh to fulfill the call of the spirit. He professed, “Not My will but Yours, Father, be done.” For Jesus and for us tomorrow, as the day after today, will be full of what we cannot control or even imagine could and will exist. What is in our power so to do is to live as faithfully step by step, moment by moment, intention by intention and hope against all hope as we can. On our own that would be, and usually is, difficult and trying. It becomes the tenor of our journey anticipating the difficulty and the trial instead of the light and peace which is offered to us in God’s love. Does it mean we won’t face such trials and devastations? Of course not! But, it does mean that our tomorrow is not ruled by them but by our faith and trust in God who has secured our eternal tomorrow if we but choose to trust, believe, obey, serve and profess that Jesus is Lord, the Son of God, who has promised us life eternal in a dwelling place of peace when that moment of translation from life in this world to the life in the next is His.

PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain this eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.