Thursday, April 5, 2007

Today’s text

1 John 3:7

“Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”

Prayer

You are righteous. That is our hope and comfort. So often the word is a threat. Erring souls turn your righteousness into a weapon to beat others into conformity, flaying them for sin and frailty, for being human and weak and needy.

Surely, this makes you weep, even as you, my brother, wept over Jerusalem and in the Garden of Gethsemane. You wept in pain and sorrow for the fallen flower of humanity, for us and the mess we make of things, for the way we use your truth to enslave rather than free.

But you are righteous, and that is our hope. You keep the promise of God to love and to love us to the end. You, blessed Jesus, suffering Jesus, dieing Jesus: you are God’s ‘Yes!’ to all of us who must shout down the “No!” of condemnation and denunciation from accusing voices that haunt the dark corridors of minds.

We can never keep the voices away for long. So we rest in your righteousness. For you are God’s “Yes” … to me. Your righteousness is no weapon but is the gift of fulfilled promise that your love abides, and abides with and for and in us—and ever will.

That is our hope, resting in the suffering love in which you reveal the righteous love of God that never turns or fails. On this holiest of weeks, grant us this assurance. Amen.

Pr. David L. Miller