May we remember today as we gather in our church-houses that our great God is intentional toward humanity. He is not scouring the earth in some mission to find the polished and the proud, the puffed up and the poignant, the pristine and the proper. God has always specialized in searching out those who were in trouble and who knew it. He is attracted to the broken, the beaten, the bereaved and the breadless. Our God’s mission does not hone in on happy carnivals and glib parades but rather barren deserts, back alleys and cold dungeons. He enters into those lives that contain people experiencing the dark night of the soul. He flames their hollow dungeons with light, their chains fall off, they arise and walk out as freemen. This is what God will do in our churches today if we seek Him for the same. He would perform resurrection and grant emancipation. This mighty King of Change would delight to pick one or more up from the pit of noise and set them on the solid rock (Psalm 40). He would clean them to the core (Psalm 51). He would smile on them (Numbers 6:25), dance around them (Zephaniah 3), place upon them a clean robe and a fair mitre on their heads (Zechariah 3). It seems we have been sure of this in many generations past, but do we now believe God has given Himself over to a perma-scowl? Has He for this generation only a furrowed brow of omniscience matched with a clenched fist of omnipotence? Is the great Savior now loathe to save? Surely God ordains change in us… but He himself will never change. He is God and He is very good. May we be blessed to see incredible evidence of His goodness wherever we gather today in His glorious name. Will you expect this or something less of Him? I am looking to see His grace, not just sing of it. My eyes are hungry to behold His salvation, not just to exegete it from the Book. My heart wants to be filled with compassion, not merely talk of the compassion in His heart. So this morning I will pray. I will ask. I will seek. I will knock. Then I will walk about 150 yards across a paved parking lot to the place where God’s people will meet this morning. And I will look for Him there.
“Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die.” – Psalm 102:18-20 {ESV}
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