Grains of Sand

Today we often hear the expression, “God showed up.” God can’t NOT show up. He is present everywhere, so beyond our capacity to understand that it isn’t just a piece of Him that is presence in every place all the time, but all of Him all the time. But what people are trying to say with that phrase “God showed up” is that God revealed Himself by doing something special at that moment. In John 1 we read this ominous statement: “ He [Christ] was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him ” (John 1:10, 11). God was there, but hardly anyone was looking for Him, or noticed Him, or wanted Him. We know that Jesus did not come as the majority of people expected Him to come. Most wanted their Messiah to come at the head of a heavenly army to overthrow the Romans and to free them from being under the thumb of a foreign ruler. Jesus came alone to restore a relationship and to free ...

Reading: Galatians 1-6 “It isn’t any of my business.” No one like a busybody. We don’t appreciate people meddling in our affairs, telling us what to do, or what not to do. Because of our aversion to those kinds of people we easily develop a “live and let live” policy. It uncomplicates relationships, makes life a whole lot less messy, and gives us the freedom to do as we want without the expectation of being confronted with our own moral and ethical faux pas. The trouble is that such an attitude is anti-biblical. Oh I don’t mean to say that being a busybody is biblical, but sometimes minding our own business can be. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is mostly a clarification of works versus grace. But when he gets to the end of the letter he targets those who claim grace as a license for sin (5:16-21) telling his readers that those who truly are Spirit-filled, resist the old habits that once characterized them and replace those old habits with the fruit of the Spirit as describ...