2638AFC091826 – Relentless again

(and nothing else matters)

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Matthew 20:15 ^b – Or are you envious because I am generous?

Psalm 145:8 (GNT) –
⁸ The Lord is loving and merciful,
    slow to become angry and full of constant love.
Philippians 1:21-24 – ²¹ For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. ²² If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³ I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; ²⁴ but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

Isaiah 55:8-9 –
⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. it’s been sort of a longish week (how’s that for equivocation?) cleaning up, cutting down, dumping over and spilling out. The two hurricanes – Lala and Lowell – did a number on Kauaʻi, but other parts of the State got it much worse. Lowell harvested about 80 pounds of our avocados, and of course, they’re all ripening at once. Lots of avocado-centered meals! Nonetheless, everyone is grateful that it only passed along the west coasts of each island and only the outer rain bands and tropical-storm-force winds clobbered us. There have been considerably worse weather conditions on the mainland – in fact, around the world! – as our climate adjusts to new parameters. That, in part, is associated with our title for today – Relentless Again. The weather, the fires, the damages and tragedies, the miracle discoveries of people who survived against incredible odds – all of that is relentless information.

Gospel In, Gospel Out.

The more immediate connection to that title – Believe It Or Else (← Click Link) – is to Buck Owens 1964 smash hit, Together Again (←listen sometime, OK?) I was thinking about the readings, and then I was listening to Fr. Mike Schmitz “Bible in a year” podcast, Episode 318 (← Click Link) and at about 25 minutes into the episode he talks about being “relentlessly pursued and ridiculously celebrated.” It is one of the best episodes in the section on the Gospel of Luke – IMHO – so I invite you to at least listen to that episode; in fact, I encourage you to listen to the entire podcast. I'm on my 3^rd trip through that one and  will start my 3^rd trip through “Catechism in a year” in about 2-3 weeks. It’s good to listen to things like that. You might remember back in the 1980’s there was the expression GIGO for computer functions – Garbage In – Garbage Out. That was the era when data could be entered using 3 x 7 punch-cards. The expression meant that if you load bad data into a computer program you can expect to get bad data out in the end. Well, I believe there is another GIGO – Gospel In, Gospel Out. IF we keep putting the Goodness of the Gospel into our hearts and minds, that’s what’s going to come out in our speech and actions. The Apostle Paul encourages us as well to “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.” (See Ephesians 5:17-19 and Colossians 3:16 ← Look’em up!)

Now, what has all of that to do with our Key Verses? I put them in reverse order because that was the way they made sense. From the Gospel of Matthew we have, Or are you envious because I am generous? You remember the story. A land-owner went out and hired laborers throughout the day and the guys who worked only the last hour of the day got paid the same as the guys who were there from sunup to sundown. The point of course, is that God is fair to everyone, anyone, and all. If we work in and for his Kingdom, behave well with each other, and honor the Master we all get paid a fair wage. {See more on that here: 2038AFC091820 – Truly Right and Just} That is because God is relentlessly Generous, relentlessly Loving, and relentlessly Just. We might remember we discussed God's Immutable Justice. That’s the “operating principle” behind his relentlessness. Do the right things, and you get a more-than-fair Reward. Do the wrong things, and you get an absolutely-just Reward.”

Constant-C

“Being Relentless” connotes being persistent, unyielding, unremitting, or inexorable (one of my favorite words!). God is always “Big C Constant” – Constant-C – as he tells us in Malachi 3:5-7 – ⁵ Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
⁶ For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. ⁷ Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, “How shall we return?” For this time in history, the Age of the Church, it is Repent and believe the Gospel! That is God's greatest Gift to us – his Word.

In James 1:17 The Apostle James tells us – ¹⁷ Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. We say it here often: God ALWAYS MAKES THE FIRST MOVE. As we’ve said, he is also stupendously Generous, and that must certainly make Old Scratch jealous! He is the Giver of Life, of Creation, of Souls, of Breath, of Day and Nights. God never stops saying, “Come back to me.” (← Music Link) His call is always an imperative, and irrevocable, but the call is also consequential. When we fail to accept his invitation, we fall into the abyss – and we know that is quite literally what happens at the moment we die IF we are foolish enough and obstinate enough to FAIL to jettison every sin that occurs in our lives. Among Christians, there are different ways to accomplish this confession of our inability to faithfully Love God with the same Constant-C with which he Loves us. Regardless of those differences in all boils down to Repent and believe the Gospel! We should also recall the Good News in the First Epistle from The Apostle John at 1 John 1:8-9 (GNT) [1] ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. ⁹ But if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing. And what do we say about that?

God is Good!
All the Time!
All the Time!
God is good!

RELENTLESS LOVE

Another way to spell that out is found in today’s Key Verse from the Psalms - ⁸ The Lord is loving and merciful, slow to become angry and full of constant love. There it is again – constant Love – RELENTLESS LOVE. Eternal Love. We plop that word around a lot – Eternal, and think of it in terms of the time in an earthling’s life, starting on our date of conception – or more conventionally on our date of birth – and going on forever from there. So, here we have another word – forever – that gets a lot of use in prayers, sermons, and Bible verses. What’s the difference between Eternal and Forever? We could move that up a notch and talk about Eternality.

"Forever" and "Eternal" connote a state of being that is beyond the boundaries of time – maybe even a nonlinear existence. Eternality is central to Christ's teaching – the core of his ministry is that in him we have life (think John 3:16 here). ETERNALITY is without beginning or end, it is perpetual, unending, immutable, incontrovertible, permanent, unimaginable for the minds of earthlings; but we talk about eternity so often, you'd think we would know what we're talking about. God's Eternality is very important in our own existences because that same Eternality is built into us – it is part of the "image and likeness of God" that makes us human; it is what makes it possible for us to experience "forever." Here's how I attempt to visualize that.

A Line and a Ray

Who remembers the class in high school called Plane Geometry? Can you differentiate between a Line and a Ray? A line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions. In Geometry, a ray is a line with a single endpoint (or point of origin) that extends infinitely in one direction. In my mind, God is somewhat like a LINE, and I am somewhat like a RAY. (← Video Link!) That helps me conceptualize it a little better, but it is also very limiting. God is more like a dynamic-array matrix, and I'm more like a linear equation. The thing is, all of that only begins to describe living forever, eternal life, and/or life everlasting. Still, that is why God pursues us relentlessly and when we do come back to him, God and ALL OF Heaven rejoices! Now, I can’t begin to imagine heavenly rejoicing, but if you think about the ways earthlings rejoice over births, weddings, graduations, buying a house, “winning the lottery,” (about 1 in 292.2 million, jah?), it must be one big, noisy, Jubilation!! And that, too, must be relentless, because – believe you me – there are sinners repenting every minute of every day! Much of that jubilation can also be felt in our lives because it’s always a great feeling when we lay that burden down. (← Music Link)

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

What can we make, then, of The Apostle Paul’s statement in our Key Verse from the Epistles? – “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” He ultimately decides it is better for the ἐκκλησία – the ekklesia, the Church, for him to stay. There are many days when I feel that longing – and I'm sure many of us feel the same. To be with Jesus would be so wonderfully GOOD! The Very Best of the Good Gifts from God!! But, as is often said here, well here’s yer sign 😄 saying it ain’t over yet! Yes, it looks a little fuzzy, but right now, so does The End! The thing is, God protects us from 🤯 being mind-blown by giving us minuscule samples of his Glory, his Power, his relentless pursuit of our Love – and obedience, that’s part of the Gift as well, sort of the ribbon and bow on the Gift? – and he even tells us it’s beyond the capacity of any ORDINARY earthling to grasp the magnitude of even those minuscule samples of the Eternal and Glorious Love of God.

The Space in Outer Space

That’s the gist of our Key Verse from the Prophet Isaiah. Here’s how I try to deal with that in my own minuscule brain and heart. You know those space telescopes that are in “outer space?” The three most famous space telescopes are the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which features a massive field of view covering 100 times more area than Hubble per snapshot. Try looking at or thinking about something as familiar yet as foreign as “The Horse Head Nebula.” (← Click Link) It’s about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion. It’s “only” approximately 3.5 light-years in radius or about 7 light-years tall! Now, if I were to try to imagine what is precisely 180° opposite Cincinnati, OH on a globe of the Earth (that kind of line is called an antipode), I'd see my RAY popping up in the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean – according to a Google "AI Overview”. I can’t really wrap my brain around a trip like that, so something 7 light-years tall? – I can’t even! And Isaiah tells us that is what God wants us to know about his ability to think, plan, do, create, conceptualize, BE! God is relentlessly magnificent, so much so that …. We can’t even! There is one “however” that goes with that. it is this:

However, no matter how extra-ordinary God is, he is also still Abba, (← Music Link) our loving Father in Heaven, who will relentlessly pursue us until we fall in Love with him again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, relentlessly. And just like in Buck Owen’s song, being together again is the whole point of us knowing and loving God who, by the life and death of HIS only-begotten son, brought – and brings – us together with him, and nothing else matters. NOTHING. BECAUSE WHY?

Because this:

Be REDEEMED

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Beloved
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