God is Love

 

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Exodus 20:8-12 King James Version

⁸ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁰ But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

The only time God spoke to humanity in His official position, He gave the ten commandments to them through the most impressive set of fireworks ever seen.

The fourth commandment is the center of His presentation. In it He identifies Himself as the Creator of heaven and earth and sea. He states that He made these in six days and rested the seventh, which He calls the Sabbath.

Let’s do a thought experiment. God identifies Himself as a creator of heaven, earth, and sea—that is, of our universe. I think in this way. Suppose God enjoys and administers his vast creations. The biggest number the Greeks named was a myriad. So maybe God spends a myriad years enjoying His creation. During this time His marvelous intellect explores other ideas for another, a different universe. Mentally, He plays around with the physics of this new universe, and the creatures He would like to have. His ideas are vast and sometimes quite strange: think of giraffe vs. rhinoceros, humming bird vs. ostrich, sloth vs. human.

God’s excitement builds over those ten-thousand years until He can’t hold it in. He spends a week creating this new universe. Then he monitors carefully how things develop there while He continues running His vast other universes. His overwhelming rule is that of love: the love of God for His creatures, the love of His creatures for Him, and the love His creatures have for each other.

Time goes by. Myriads progress one after another. Envision this happening since time immemorial. There is no first universe creation. God has always been doing this! Then God’s greatest helper decides he can run all these universes better than God has been doing. He has been God’s right-hand angel since time immemorial. He skillfully starts the greatest coup d’état ever attempted. God in love does not kill him outright, but he is driven from heaven. He chooses to take up residence in God’s latest creation. He swiftly defeats its lord—Adam and Eve. Then God lets him develop his insurrection until everyone in all of God’s universes recognizes that Satan is a brutal imposter.

We are in the final scenes of this fierce struggle. Love eventually overcomes evil. Notice that EVIL is simply LOVE spelt backwards with “I” taking the place of the hug, “O”. Without love, life becomes misery or evil.

I awoke this morning with words of the song “The Love of God” running through my mind.

The love of God is greater far
  Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
  And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
  God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
  And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
  And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
  On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
  All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
  The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
  And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
  And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
  Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
  Though stretched from sky to sky.

Frederick M. Lehman, 1917
v. 3 by Anonymous/Unknown

 

Dear Lord, I love You and yearn for Your final banishment of evil and establishment of Your kingdom of love!

 

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Evil--Live Spelt Backwards

 

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Amos 5:14-15 (New International Version)

Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

 

When I was growing up, Americans referred to America as God’s Own Country. There were still people around who remembered the terrible Civil War—a war to banish the terrible evil of slavery. In those days many still believed that God had allowed (or sent) that war to punish Americans for allowing human bondage in God’s Own Country.

By the time I was old enough to remember anything, we had just won the war against Nazism, genocide, and destruction of freedom. America emerged the richest, most powerful nation on earth.

Since that time evil has crept back in. Or has it rushed in? Ideas like “God is dead” and concerted effort to destroy the family as well as the banning of even the mention of God in education and total denial of the devil—the source of all evil—to his great advantage, have gained strength. The sexual revolution, toleration of openly corrupt politicians, and voluntary destruction of over sixty million fetuses compound the negative effects.

The net result is the almost daily shootings in schools; global warming that ravages our environment; increased terror such as caused by the 9-11 attack; invasions, especially along the southern border of our country; embroilment in wars like Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, and Afghanistan, that have killed our young men by the thousands; increasingly vast expenditures on foreign wars.

O, America, we desperately need to search for good and reject evil before it is too late!

Truly we can borrow this prayer from Amos for our situation:
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant in America!

 

 

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Damocle's Sword

 

 

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Revelation 22:10-12 (King James Version)

 ¹⁰And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.

 ¹¹He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

 ¹²And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

 

It started early in life. We were discussing the closing of probation in a class in my parochial primary school. I had already discovered the inevitability of sin in my life. Time and time again I had had to seek forgiveness for something I had done. I began to understand how basically evil I was, even though I was not yet ten years old. This doctrine that God would draw a line across time after which the solemn declaration would be pronounced, petrified me:

The threat of this proclamation hung over my head like Damocles’ sword. It struck fear into my young breast that haunted me. My teacher explained that if there was a sin in my life that was unforgiven, it could no longer be forgiven. The fires of hell were awaiting me.

Timidly I raised my hand and asked a question that haunted me. Since, my entire life had been a sequence of sins for which I had to ask forgiveness, not only of God but also some mortal soul I had wronged. “What if I’m on my way to ask forgiveness and the close of probation is declared? Will it be too late?”

My teacher, who loved us kids, realized the distress I found myself in. But I’m not sure that she had encountered that question. Her answer left a lot of uncertainty in my mind: “I’m sure that if God sees you’re actually going to confess a sin that He will understand.” But her answer lacked conviction.

To her the guardian angels God had assigned to each one of us carried a black book and continually wrote down every evil thought or action we might have. That picture of my guardian angel had been burned into my young mind, too. The angel might indeed be guarding me from harm, although he never stopped me from getting hurt, possibly because he was too busy writing down the continuous notes about my sins.

My life span had to double before I would begin to put Christ’s yielding His life for me together with His love for purity. Christ loved me and that is why His grace took care of my evil nature. Probation might indeed close, but God’s love and grace would never end.

Thank You, Jesus, for Your infinite and eternal love. Help me to show others this great love.

 

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