Shema
CF Ambassador
An Emoji Devotions for Thu July 8th, 2021
Topic: God’s unfailing love and goodness
By H.U. Wenger
Highlights: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1. John 4:9 – 10)
Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. (Psalm 48:9)
Among Christian it is generally accepted that God is good and that he loves mankind. Nevertheless many Christians have difficulties to agree that God is unfailingly and absolutely good and loving. Events in their own life or in the lives of people they know let them think that God can be as well quite cruel and beyond human grasp. It is true and God states it in Isaiah 55 himself that his thoughts and ways are beyond what humans can understand. But whatever God does, his intentions are always full of love and mercy. The riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience are geared to lead us to repentance according to Romans 2:4. As Jesus walked the earth he showed us the character of the father. He had to rebuke the abuse of the law of God for human gain, but he never did anything that would have damaged one single human being. In John 14:6 Jesus stated to his disciples: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In the context he had prepared the disciples for his suffering and his going to the Father and Thomas had questioned how they could know where he is going to. Philipp then said to Jesus: Just show us the Father and it will be enough for us. Jesus replied: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? If Jesus has harmed no one in his earthly life, we can know for sure that from the beginning of the world the Father has loved every human being and he has never ever damaged anyone.
You may have gone through hardship and difficult experiences, but it has never been the retribution of God. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) There are three things that bring us into harm’s way: our own sin, the law of sowing and reaping and all the human attempts to be our own God.
Adam and Eve decided in the temptation against God and for the perspective of being god themselves. This was treason against God and their sin. At the same time it was the planting of a bad seed that lead to strive, envy, hatred murder, oppression and ultimately to a lot of man inflicted misery.
Through the act of treason Satan got empowered to plague mankind with all sorts of maladies and misfortunes. Since then we have lost the divine protection, but we never lost his goodness and love, that will guide us to repentance. God searches for you and me through his unfailing love and goodness. The sons of Corah praise in Psalm 48 the city of God and mention that they meditate on God’s unfailing love in the temple.
In the New Testament the temple in Jerusalem disappeared, but through the Holy Spirit God made a temple out of the body of every single one of his followers. We are supposed to meditate on God’s goodness and love in that very temple, despite all the attacks from the enemy. Whenever we think that God has sent us punishment or harm, we are deceived. He does not do such things. All he does is to draw us towards him. “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:16 – 17)
Prayer: Thank you Lord for loving me despite my treason against you. Thank you for your atonement and your unfailing love and goodness. Thank you for your being absolutely good. Let me cling to that truth despite my often times distorted perception. Amen.
