Monday 23 March 2009

This week devotions are based on a section of "The Strength of Love" called 'Our God is Able" - by Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history. This conviction is stressed over and over in the Old and New Testaments. Theologically, this affirmation is expressed in the doctrine of the omnipotence of God. The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of oppression and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.

Able...to heal the universe through a love that, as Tillich writes, reunites the separated. Able...to see to the welfare of the intrinsic power of all so that no one is trampled for the sake of another. Able...to oversee to integrity of each person. God is able. But so often, we will have nothing to do with what God is able to do. In fact, we turn away from this power that is available to make for the well-being of all things. God is able to create new life. This is not a God who is to be used to make sure that my passes are on target or I can run and get into the end zone. God is able to bring life...and does not need to fill our lives with what we want. Our God is able to withstand time and carry a people into the depths of promise and establish glimpses of promise within real time. Many leaders of the civil rights abided in the presence of this able God even when the evidence of the day made it seem as though God is not able to topple the injustice of the world. We may fall and we may be pushed down and we may not finish this race completely, but God is able to bend creation to shape a new day of hope and brilliant vision.

Connection: This is not magic. This is a living reality in which we are invited to abide. It is not able me and my own...it is about the fullness of all life.

Come, Lord of Creation, come and remind us of the presence and reality of your Reign. For as we can remember your promises, that which tries to destroy us today will not have power over the lives we live as people of promise. Praise to you, O God. Amen.