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The Forward Day by Day Meditation for August 11, 2015

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TUESDAY, August 11

Psalm 100:4 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.

One of my favorite prayers from The Book of Common Prayer begins, “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace...” When I see Jesus on the cross with his arms open to embrace all of creation in self-sacrificial love, my doubts and fears about the goodness of God fade away.

My early spiritual life was full of many doubts about the goodness of God. The God I first learned about was a wrathful God, characterized by a desire to punish those who did wrong. My faith was consumed with avoiding the punishment of an angry God. I was scared to death of God, scared to know or be known by God.

This characterization of God traumatized me, and I may always be recovering from this way of viewing things. But I have come to understand the true nature of God is seen in the self-giving love of Christ. That realization, coming to understand the nature and character of a loving and living Jesus as the incarnation of a living and loving God, has changed my life...and saved it.

PRAY for the Diocese of Rokan (Sudan)

Today the Church remembers Clare, Abbess at Assisi, 1253.

Ps 97, 99, [100] * 94, [95]; 2 Samuel 14:1-20; Acts 21:1-14; Mark 10:1-16