God's Best for Us

 Psalm 38              Leviticus 11-12                   Ephesians 1

Today’s reading from the Psalms is one of those of deep longing to know that God is still there and holding us up when it seems like so many others are looking for ways to destroy you. The truth is that often leads to anger, frustration, and not so holy thoughts. During this season of Lent as we reflect on our lives and the things that need to change about us, they are those ways which are not God’s ways and are often far more difficult to change than we like to admit. When God points out things about us that need to change, they often feel like an arrow piercing our heart, pressing us down and making us weary.

David also reminds us that nothing is hidden from God, not even our thoughts. Still, when our strength fails, our vision dims and our family and friends seem so far off, our hope is in that God is still our foundation and, in the end, will hold us up.

It is important that we pore our heart out to God and confess our sins, those things we do contrary to God’s expectations. While the actions of others create anxiety and we feel rejected and even hated, God does not forsake us or is every really far from us.

The Lord is our salvation!

Leviticus 11 lays out all those food restrictions we can’t imagine having to follow. In an earlies study of passages like this it was interesting to look at things like harvesting and preserving food before there was the science behind what we take for granted. In reading the history of salt I often thought about these passages and how change began to occur. The relatively new availability to refrigeration and preservatives has led to all kinds of changes in the way we eat.

Chapter 12 is a short instruction on circumcision and purification after birth. While our first instinct is to reject this as old thinking how much does it reflect on the need for the body to rest and renew?

In Ephesians Paul reminds them he has been given the right to be a spokesperson for Jesus by God and he is writing to those that have begun the journey of being disciples of Jesus. He reminds them we as men and women have been chosen to represent him on earth. When we begin to commit ourselves to following the ways of Jesus, we are adopted back into the family we were born to be a part of, the family of God.

The story he tells is one that is timeless and spreading the good news about God’s love through Jesus is our responsibility. We inherited the Kingdom of God we were sealed with the love of God as lived on with the Holy Spirit so that all may be redeemed by God and become a part of the praise of God’s work.

Paul’s prayer is to be a model for our prayer life. That through us other eyes will be opened to the hope that we have in Christ and how rich that inheritance is. God placed all of the earth in subjection to Jesus Christ and once again to those that follow him through the Holy Spirit.

As I read through today’s readings, I was touched by the fact that God commands things of us not because he wants power over us but that he might set us free to live as we were created to live. Often we want to see what God asks of us as a limitation when in fact it is an effort to set us free to be all we were created to be.