Celestial celebration over you

"   I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner who repents."  Luke 15

There are three wonderful, consecutive parables in the Gospel of Luke that
I will call "recovery" parables. In each, something of value as either been lost
or has walked away. Each of these items, a lost sheep, a stone and the prodigal
son has a great value to the one who has lost it. In each case, the return of
the item causes great celebration over its recovery.

In a very real way, each of us is a lost sheep. Sheep are animals that do
not do so well on their own. They have the tendency to become lost, disoriented,
weak; they are subject to disease, poison plants, predators, and without
their shepherd, can be in such trouble that even death can result. We were
lost in sin, blind to out situations and dead to sinfulness before we were
recovered by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. Our chances of
being saved, of being seen as righteous before a Holy God, of being able to stand in His presence, were zero.

Like the prodigal son, we had turned our backs on God determined to strike
out on our own, taking an eternal inheritance and squandering it in our pride
and self-assurance. Our situations, like his, were not what we had imagined they
would become. Like the father in the parable, God has welcomed us back,
even to the point of celebration over our recovery as one valuable to the
Living God. Through He is totally against sin, He has compassion and
love for His created and a willingness to reach out, hoping that we will
respond.

The Day of the Lord is at hand when all will stand judgement; yet, He waits
until the exact right time, hoping that as many as possible will hear the voice
of the shepherd and respond in repentance and belief.

What a wonderful awesome God He is!

Seeking a "degree" of Thank-ology

Love to mess with the titles. No..I won't be going back to my beloved Ohio State
University to earn a new degree. Been there and done that. No need to return to worrying about mid-terms, finals, papers, being on time, etc. No dissertation or oral exams
to contemplate. 

By degree, I mean amount, in this instance. I am looking to increase, exponentially, my
conscious appreciation for the blessings given to me by my God. They are so many,
it's difficult to imagine the number. They are magnanimous, unearned, gracious
loving examples of the generosity and love that I receive, daily, from the God of the
universe.

The problem, and I am sure I share this with many who may be readers, is taking
the time to remember to be thankful. I am in the real retirement mode, at this point.
I have stopped working part-time and am not actively seeking employ. My career
has long been a thing of the past so I am left with exercise, taking care of my cat, trying
to avoid over stretching my relationship with the daughter I love: translation... I have a
lot of time. So no real excuses; I have the time to concentrate on thanking Him for
everything. It's a conscious decision, one that I am making more frequently, but, still,
I have to remind myself to speak these thanks to Him.

One thing I have done is to take the thanks down to the basic level. I am thankful
for each and every heartbeat, each and every breath I am blessed to be able to take.
I am thankful for each day spent out of hospital, each day filled with the realization
that life is tenuous, fleeting and temporary. 

I use my walking time to remind me to thank Him for this beautiful created world I
live in. Sure, it is broken, but it still is a representation of the greatest creative force
in the universe. 

Believe it or not, I thank Him for my brokenness. It helps me to keep humble when I
realize that I am sinful and very much in need of a savior. It keeps me grounded in
the knowledge that I need to use the awareness of my rebellion to seek to repent
in earnest and turn, with the Spirit's help, away from temptations and sinfulness.

Then there is the Gospel; what a blessed reason to give thanks. Thanks to the
Lamb of God who became corporal and walked toward death, the only thing that
would establish a way for me to be forgiven and seen as acceptable to God.

Finally, I am thankful for a future of hope. A future complete with the upcoming
residence in the presence of God, Jesus and all others who will live in an eternity
of blessing. THANK YOU, GOD! (Did I remember to say, "THANK YOU?")

Repent me, Jesus

Romans 7: 15   I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but
   what I hate, I do.

                 7:  21  So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there 
    with me.

It is obviously crucial to be able to repent. Being sorry that we sin is, in part, a
function of our conscience, that part of us that recognizes the difference between
good and evil. Moving on to repentance is the act of turning away from the sins
we commit, heading the opposite direction, if you will, in an attempt to eliminate the
sinful actions from our behavior.

Simple enough, right? Not so much. You recognize the speaker of the Bible verses
above. It is Paul, converted along the Damascus Road by Jesus, himself. Paul, or
Saul of Tarsus, renowned former persecutor of early followers of Christ. Paul, one
of the most intelligent, persistent, hard-nosed characters found in the Bible who
recovered his sight, a changed soul who went on to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Paul, whose ability to bring churches into being, preach the gospel and withstand
torture and imprisonment was astounding. Yet, he, Paul, is stating that even he has
tremendous difficulty doing what is righteous. After personal conversion at the
voice of Jesus and acceptance of the Holy Spirit, he still struggles with sin. 

So here's my point. We know that we will never be without sin, no matter how
our heart wishes that we could be. This means that we will constantly be
bombarded by the will to sin, will sin, and then be faced with the need to confess
our sins to God and repent. I am suggesting, with the title of this little blog, that
repentance needs to be done To us,  not By us. We need to pray that God, Himself,
through His Spirit, will be right there with us as we attempt to turn away from
sin. We are asked to look into our own hearts....I agree with the person who called
that looking into a fun-house mirror. We're just not capable of reading our hearts
and our intentions with accuracy. So we need to lean on Jesus...that is lean on His
love and desire to help us become more like Him. Not on our own! We need all the
help we can get. Who better to seek out for this help than the Holy God who created
us. Praise His Holy name!