With all of the complications that our life and upbringing and society and culture and sin bring to the table as we prepare to study God’s Word… there is at least one plain truth that I feel confident needs little translation. 

Jeremiah 3:22    “Come back, wandering children! I can heal your wanderlust!” -the message 

“Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.” -NIV
“Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness.” -NASB 

God is able and willing to heal.  To restore.  To make whole what we have willingly and sometimes enthusiastically broken.  God reconciles us to Himself through Jesus Christ.  The Psalm reading for today mentions some of the amazing things The One True God does on a regular basis: He is the Maker of heaven and earth, He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, gives sight to the blind, lifts up those who have fallen, loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the foreigner and takes the side of orphans and widows.                   The LORD reigns forever. 

We really messed ourselves and our world up with the fall in the Garden of Eden.  We continue to mess things up… regularly.  Fortunately the reading from Titus tells a little bit more of the plain truth I mentioned above:  But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 

The plain truth of it is simple.  The kids in the children’s program can tell you…  Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  The song simplifies, but does not water down what we will spend an entire lifetime learning, relearning, wrestling with, and deepening in understanding: Because of who The Lord is, I am loved by Him and He pursues me with reckless grace.  Thank you God, may we all remember this and never feel as though the Good News is somehow “simple” and “old news.”  Amen.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 12:20 am and is filed under Daily Readings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.