2-12-2025

Good Morning All,

        Micah 4:6; “In that day, declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted;”    

     I remember watching a movie about the Civil War a few years ago.  I don’t remember the name or even the general plot line.  I just remember one scene in the movie where they showed a bucolic scene of sunlight dancing through the leaves of the trees filled with birds and there was a hedge lined road with a rabbit hopping along the road.  Then came the line of soldiers, but not the regular army, these were the maimed, the wounded, those who had lost an arm or a leg or were blind and were heading home from the war.  The contrast of the beauty of the day and the scenery was shattered by the tattered bodies trying to go home.

    In many ways, this image can haunt us often.  When you watch the news, you see the bodies of blown-up soldiers returning home.  You see communities destroyed by fire or storm.  You see unimaginable events, indescribable pain, and hopeless remorse.  We see the lame and those who have been driven away.

    Many times, we are those who are lame or driven away.  The cares of this world, the pain of broken relationships, the fear of tomorrow, can cause us to feel like we have had limbs ripped from us.  There is something that is missing in our lives and we feel the effect of it every day.

    Sometimes these events can have the effect on us where we look aimlessly at the distance, not at anything in particular, but with that vacant, lost look of someone who has lost everything.  We have the look of someone who has no hope.  You see that look often.  There is that picture of an Okie farm wife from the Great Depression that really sums up the pain of an entire generation with that vacant hopelessness.  That look is on many people’s faces today as well.

    The problem is that too often we look for hope, for truth, for comfort, for our sense of security in all the wrong places and just like the soldier who steps on a landmine; we are blown back, blown away and blown apart.  Our sin destroys us to our very core down to our very being.  We are lost; left to limp our way back to what we think, and hope is home.

    Into this mess, God comes with his words of comfort, his words of promise, and his words of hope.  God comes to rescue you and me from all that the world has done to us, from all that we have done to ourselves.  Jesus came to proclaim the good news of reconciliation.  Jesus came to proclaim the good news of forgiveness of sins.  Jesus came to pay the debt that you and I cannot. 

    Through our Baptism, God calls us, the lame, the blind, those who were driven away, back into his family.  We are called back to live in his saving grace under his watchful eye, safe in his loving arms.  In that day we are assembled in His grace waiting for the final day when we will be ultimately assembled before the throne of heavenly glory.     

Dear Father of all grace, your mercies are new to us every day.  Heal us, your wounded and broken people with your wondrous love.  Give us hope and give us courage to withstand the devil’s attacks and keep us safely in your arms.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret