Begin
In your mind's eye see all those people who have given up some portion of their lives so that your life could blossom. Thank God for them right now.
Scripture
“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” 1 John 3:14-17
Reflect
In your mind's eye see all those people who have given up some portion of their lives so that your life could blossom. Thank God for them right now.
Scripture
“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” 1 John 3:14-17
Reflect
If
God used evolutionary processes to bring us to where we are today (a view fully
compatible with an inerrant view of scripture) then it certainly looks like he
created a dog eat dog world. Not only that, but he also called it good!!
What?
Then along comes Jesus, in today's passage reiterated by John, telling us to buck the evolutionary drive of self-preservation and do the exact opposite which is to give myself up for others. I am to suffer loss so that others can experience life. Could it be that in choosing to be Christ-like by suffering loss I am experiencing the "good life"? Could it be that when God called everything he had made good that behind it is the reality that our transcending our self-preservation through suffering is a good, perhaps the primary good that makes us partners with God himself. The motto of hell is eat or be eaten. The motto of heaven is eat and be eaten
Prayer
Then along comes Jesus, in today's passage reiterated by John, telling us to buck the evolutionary drive of self-preservation and do the exact opposite which is to give myself up for others. I am to suffer loss so that others can experience life. Could it be that in choosing to be Christ-like by suffering loss I am experiencing the "good life"? Could it be that when God called everything he had made good that behind it is the reality that our transcending our self-preservation through suffering is a good, perhaps the primary good that makes us partners with God himself. The motto of hell is eat or be eaten. The motto of heaven is eat and be eaten
Prayer
"Lord,
forgive
my selfish slavery to preserving my comfort which imprisons me in an endless
all-consuming pursuit which ends without the comfort I seek to preserve
anyway. I will, beginning now, seek to extend myself at cost to myself
even in on the smallest of ways to serve someone else who needs help.
Amen."
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
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There are problems with applying the theory of evolutionary processes to scripture. If death is punishment for sin, how could there be millions of years of living and dying before sin entered the world?
ReplyDeleteAlso, God is not the author of sin. He did not bring sin into the world to make us suffer to be more like Christ. If man had not sinned there would be no need for Christ.
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[a] because all sinned.