June 20, 2013
Weekly Visitation
A City Councilman just bought a new home in another area of town and he
will no longer live in the district to which he was elected. According to the
City Charter he must vacate his seat if he moves out of his district, however,
his current term doesn’t expire until next year and he desperately wants to
hang onto the seat. One of his excuses for not changing his address officially
is that he is still doing repairs on the new house. If the conversation on the
street is correct, say he’d like to ‘live’ at his old residence during the week
and ‘visit’ his wife and five children on the weekend. I’m indignant. He swore
to uphold the Charter, which he is now trying to manipulate, and his in-action
to vacate the seat while continuing to draw a salary borders on fraud. Hmmm. Not
much different than believers who want to keep their feet in both worlds. They accepted
Jesus as their Lord and Savior and think they can just visit Him on weekends.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I am reluctant to be the parrot. Yet, so often the same set of Scriptures turn up as relevant to your topics. I believe this might be so because, like I’ve said before, I think this set of Scriptures is fundamentally embedded in the nature of all things happening. But then again, even though the same set of sub-atomic particles - electrons, protons, and neutrons - are embedded at the core of everything material, I don’t ask for a cup of those when I wish to sugar my coffee. Maybe I should! “Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written, ’That Thou mayest be justified in Thy Words, and prevail when Thou art judged.” (Rom 3:4) So, there! I squawked again. All Christians are yet men (and women. Ladies, it’s just a literary expression.)
-----But I will get in real trouble for this one: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:8-10) Contextually, Paul is referring to the Gentiles’ inclusion in salvation and their place in the church. But I see also a bigger metaphor in that inclusion, for the inclusion happened through grace, not works.
-----If you read the seven letters in Revelation with a mind for the symbolism involved on the one hand (especially for the symbols from Old Testament history,) and a mind for church history on the other, you will be amazed at the total parallel between the two. I assuredly believe those letters carried a strong prophetic purpose as well as a sound criticism of the church‘s abundant failures. Both church history and the letters show a church sinful and divided rather than united, as Jesus prayed for their unity to be the convincing of the world that the Father had sent Him (John 17:20-21.) By the eighteenth century the world became convinced Jesus was a hoax and God was dead. And look at the church today! How many denominations are sure they alone are God’s right way, having clothes-pinned their noses before acknowledging others are brothers in the Lord, too? I won’t draw the list of charges which can properly be laid at the Bride’s feet. We all know it is very, very long.
-----And this has been the church through which God manifested His great wisdom? Yes! Because His great wisdom is the truth of His undefeatable love. And His undefeatable love abides in His infinite mercy. And His infinite mercy pours over the truth of the sinners’ desires to be reconciled to Him though, before they came, they were foreigners and though their behavior still resides at different houses than what is their spirits’ home made through His grace. All of it shows His truth and our fallacy, His wisdom and our foolishness.
-----It is sad that we bring more life to church on the weekends than we do to work throughout the week. But to the glory of His grace giving us wisdom by our confessions, it is yet as true as Romans 3:4 states it.
-----Unlike your said councilman, while we yet reside at the old house the repairs being done are to it, and not as an excuse, but as a reality, because the new house is so perfect that our hope ever drives us towards its splendor.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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