In looking ahead to the new year, our church congregation is praying for God’s guidance through a key vision question: How does God want to express himself through our church in our community at this time? A slight rephrasing of this question provides an excellent prompt for our personal devotions as well: How does God want to express himself through me in the spaces I inhabit at this particular time?
All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.
Like Santa, we each have our personal Naughty-or-Nice list. We evaluate people according to how they’ve treated us and let our feelings determine how we think about them. We count ourselves justified in treating people differently depending on where we’ve placed them in our ledger.
Forgiveness has been called an unnatural act. We humans instinctively hunger for justice that balances a wrongful deed with punishment that fits the crime. When we seek to be like Jesus, the Spirit reshapes our desires with a new, divine nature that makes forgiveness and loving our enemies possible.
When we surrender our relationships to the rule of love, God transforms our perceptions of the people who hurt and betray us. Instead of seeing enemies, we recognize fellow humans suffering in traps of sin and self-deception.
We honor Christ when we follow his example and do good to those who harm us.
