Daily Lesson for August 7, 2014

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 145 verses 8, 9 and 15-18:

8 The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made.
15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
16 You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.
18 The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

Whether we are Christian, or Jew, or Muslim, or any other religion, we must be very careful when we speak of ourselves as God's "chosen people".  Without doubt, some are indeed chosen by God for certain tasks or callings. Jews we believe were chosen to be "a light for all the nations." Christians we believe were chosen to help carry that light forward. But to be chosen for the sake of the nations is very different from being chosen over and against them.

We can say, "God is on our side" but we must never forget that in a very profound way God is on the other side also. God is on all sides because God is always on the side of those who are hurt and wounded and grieving and suffering.  We must never lose sight of this and it must chasten us whenever we are in any conflict with any other person or people. God is with them too.

There is a famous commentary in the Jewish Talmud where God chastises the angels as they begin to sing at the drowning of the Egyptians at the Red Sea.   “My handiwork is drowning in the sea," God says, "and you utter songs before me!” (Sanhedrin 39b). 

We are all -- Hebrew and Egyptian, Jew and Gentile -- pieces of God's handiwork, made in God's image; and God cares for us each and all. He hears our prayers -- and He listens to them. He knows our names.  He has numbered the hairs of all our heads. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without him knowing it; nor a single child of any nation. We are all children of our Heavenly Father, and His desire is to save us all -- even our enemies.

Perhaps what I am trying to say is best summed up in a poem German clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell before being executed by the Nazis. It was said that before his execution Bonhoeffer was a gentlemen to his guards and treated them with the kindness becoming of a Christian pastor.

All people go to God in need
For help and calm and food they plead
For sickness and fear and death to cease
All people pray for peace

But some turn to God in God's need and dread
A God poor, despised without roof or bread
By sin's harm weakened and by death distressed
Christians stand steadfast by their God oppressed

But God, God goes to all in their need and dread
Their souls' loving grace and their bodies' bread
By the crucified one who for them was slain
Both Christians and pagans God's pardon gain