Daily Lesson for May 14, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter verses 14 through 16 and chapter 5 verses 1 and 2:

14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested* as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

5Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.

On Sunday we sang an old hymn titled "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy". It is a powerful hymn to me personally, and one my own dear pastor and mentor Hardy Clemons used to quote while officiating particularly difficult funerals and graveside services including, especially, services for those who died by suicide.

In one particularly straightforward and meaningful verse, the hymn has these words:

We make God’s love too narrow

by false limits of our own,

and we magnify its strictness

with a zeal God will not own.

We humans have a tendency to be more judgmental than God. That's especially the case when it comes to our own selves. We make the perfect the enemy of the good; and we struggle mightily in the shadow cast between the two.

But the Gospel calls us to be more gentle -- more gentle with others, and especially more gentle with ourselves. For when we are gentle and kind with ourselves, we become more gentle and kind with others.

The Bible says, God did not send Jesus to condemn the world. We've done enough condemning ourselves. What we need is saving.

God sent Jesus for the sake of salvation. God sent Jesus for the sake of kindness and gentleness. God sent Jesus for the sake of grace. And in the end, grace abounds -- more than we expected, and even more than we would have hoped. But that's what's necessary.

When the woman was caught in adultery Jesus got everyone to drop their rocks, and then said to her, "Has not one condemned you? Neither do I. Now go and sin no more." One rock still remained -- the woman's invisible, self-condemning, rock of shame. She herself had to let go of that one.

We all do.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.