Everyone faces his or her own demons, especially when we face moments of decision. At times, we struggle to appreciate where others are at in the midst of our fights; in other circumstances, we ready empathize with each other, struggle in tandem, readily taking on the others burdens. I agree that the complexities of life are increasing, I accept that people in this moment of history face pressures beyond the imagination of those just a few generations before, and I can easily consider that the source is beyond any one persons control. Pressures abound at every corner!
When someone talks about the latest crisis, it is too easy to slip into a philosophical or cynical mode. Either response tends to minimize the reality of the stress, the uncertainty of the present, and the questions that come with any hope for the future. To you, and all others that I took this stance with, I offer my most sincere apology. I had an opportunity to be God’s ear and voice and I easily let it slip through my fingers.
The daily pressure of life is one of the most insidious separators we face with God. Schedules to meet, bills that just cannot get paid, family asking and demanding things we do not know how to deliver, and frustration with dreams beyond our reach. Each of these things, along with all the unmentionables, drives a wedge between God and us. With the present creeping in around us, God seems father away, more distant, and somehow more irrelevant than ever.
Anything that separates us from God falls into the category of sin. “All that sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life – a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.” (Romans 5.21) Sin separates, grace pulls together. One destroys; the other rebuilds into a world with hope and opportunities.
Today is another full of pressures. Thanks God for Grace, gifts for you and me.
