Looking for a City whose Builder is God
Good Morning Friends,
When you look at a cross what do you see? Is there a mystery about it that attracts you to know more about God and about the person wearing it? One can see the cross as a piece of art work in nature, inked on bodies or embedded in city architectures…in windows and doorways…on steeples of churches. Does it not attract your attention? One might see a cross around the neck of a nun or on a tattoo of a college student. I like to see the cross as a witness to the ever growing membership in God’s Mobile Family… a salvation army bound to one another but also freed to be Looking for a City whose Builder is God.
Scripture: The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:13 (NRSV)
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
Psalm 46:4 (NIV)
For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.
Hebrews 3:4 (NRSV)
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
Mark 16:15 (NRSV)
Message: The people of the world are on the move. God told Abraham to go. Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world. The role of the church in this movement of holy history is interesting for its role is neither to adapt to ever shifting cultural norms, morals and fashions nor to flee from it. The challenge is to engage the people of the Cross to be part of the movement of redemption in this history….to join God in the building of the kingdom to come.
Pray we realize that the God who has redeemed the world in Christ. Pray we realize that God is alive and present with us continuing to transform people and place. Pray we realize that we are not to try and escape the rigors of a sin-stained world nor submit to it but in the love of Christ show others a better way. Pray we stop looking for a city and join God in the building of it. Pray we go when called to go and sin no more. Pray our cities cease to be warzones and become joyful playgrounds for God. Pray for my wife as she begins to weave palm crosses as a sign of how God weaves us together to show forth the power of the love on God.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 