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Monday, June 8, 2020

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” —Romans 8:21

We humans are part of creation. We are part of God’s creation. We are God’s image bearers in creation.

We are just a part of God’s massive creation. Anyone who has contemplated the scale of the universe is familiar with the humbling awareness of how small our little speck of a planet is. Within our little planet, we are just one species. And each one of us is just one organism of this one species on this one planet in this one solar system in this one galaxy.

And yet, in some mysterious and ennobling sense, we humans are distinctly important in this creation. In his letter to Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul wrote that our own liberation from sin has creation-wide implications. All of creation suffers when we fail to be the image bearers of God we were made to be. And all of creation rejoices at our liberation.

A lot of this is cloaked in mystery. How exactly is human sin implicated in seemingly random suffering like a child’s cancer diagnosis or a fatal freak accident or a (pre-human) mass extinction event? I don’t really know how to talk about those connections (to the extent that they exist) in any intelligible and loving and truthful way.

But there are also elements that we can see pretty clearly. The current mass extinction event has a lot to do with our arrogant destruction of creation. The spread of a novel coronavirus and the suffering that’s gone along with it have in some cases been made worse by pre-existing sinful neglect of poor and under-resourced communities and by leadership around the world more focused on self-preservation than on servanthood. The frequency and severity of extreme weather events have been increased by our sinful and short-sighted delay in adopting renewable energy sources.

Thankfully, the remedy stands before us, not as an abstract idea or principle, but as a person. On the cross, Jesus liberated us from bondage to sin and death. He liberated all of us. Creation longs for us to realize that we’re free and to start living like the redeemed. Creation longs for us to give up our addictions to pride and myopia and become addicted to compassion and wisdom. Creation longs for us to remember that we bear the very image of our Creator, that we are claimed as children of the one true King of creation, that we have been set free for freedom. Creation is looking to us to be who we are.

Friday, June 5,2020

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

I think we’ve all done it. We’re anxious about something that’s going on in life and once we’ve exhausted all other options, we reach for the Bible thinking “Maybe this thing has an answer in it.” Then without looking, we open it to a random page and point at a verse hoping that it will speak precisely about what it is we’re facing.

It’s like playing Bible roulette or using the Bible like a magic 8-ball. While that method rarely works, we are right somewhere in the Bible is the answer to what we’re facing.

Today’s verse is part of a famous section from 2 Corinthians. In this section, Paul vaguely refers to a “thorn in his flesh” that he’s prayed for God to take away from him. But rather than taking it from him, Paul says that God gave him this verse in response.

God is saying that the grace extended to followers of Jesus means that we don’t need to look ahead to tomorrow when the trial we’re facing goes away. Right now, in this moment in the middle of whatever you are facing, God’s grace is sufficient.

The famous preacher Charles Spurgeon put it this way in 1876, “ It is easy to believe in Grace for the past and the future, but to rest in it for the immediate necessity is true faith…At this moment and at all moments which shall ever occur between now and Glory, the Grace of God will be sufficient for you! This sufficiency is declared without any limiting words and, therefore, I understand the passage to mean that the Grace of our Lord Jesus is sufficient to uphold you, sufficient to strengthen you, sufficient to comfort you, sufficient to make your trouble useful to you, sufficient to enable you to triumph over it, sufficient to bring you out of it, sufficient to bring you out of 10,000 like it…”

Our instinct to go to the Bible when facing difficulty is correct. But rather than waiting until we’re out of options, we need to be reaching for the Bible each day so that we read and reread the truth’s about God’s character and the promises God has made to us. When we do that, we reflexively call to mind passages, stories, verses that are applicable to what we are dealing with. Trusting that God is present right now, trusting that will be more than enough.

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry. —Psalm 34:15

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. —Matthew 7:7

Last night, a prayer vigil for racial justice was held in Park Ridge. Some people gathered at a social distance near Uptown to pray, and many others chose to pray from home at the same time. In the midst of confusion, anger, fear, and heartbreak, Christ-followers pray. Even as we’re also called to act, turning first to our powerful and loving God is a non-negotiable part of the Christian life. We carry the confusion, anger, fear, and heartbreak directly to God. We ask God for guidance and healing. We ask God for direction and wisdom. We ask God for courage and compassion. We remember that God is the surest source of what we, and the world, need.

In today’s passages, I am in awe of God’s responsiveness to us. God doesn’t ignore us. God isn’t too far or too busy. When we speak, God is present, God listens, and God responds. The psalmist reminds us that God’s “ears are open” to the cries of God’s people. In fact, in the rest of Psalm 34, he repeats similar words about God’s responsiveness to people. The psalmist says, “I sought the LORD, and he answered me” (v. 4), “This poor man called, and the LORD heard him” (v. 6), “those who seek the LORD lack no good thing” (v. 10), and “the righteous cry out and the LORD hears them” (v. 17). Likewise, Jesus assures his followers in the book of Matthew that when we fervently pursue God, things happen: ask and receive, search and find, knock and enter.

I have said before that when problems feel big, I feel too small to pray. And the truth is, I am very small relative to the world’s pain and injustices. That’s precisely why prayer is essential. These passages are a call not just to pray, but to persist in prayer—to keep talking to God, to keep seeking God, to keep asking God to intervene.