Tag: faith

It is Right and Just!

In many churches around the world millions of Christians regularly hear this challenge,  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” which is followed by “It is Right and Just.”  Every time I say those words I stumble over “just.”  Maybe because I spend my days fighting for “justice” for my law firm’s clients and I just don’t easily connect “justice” with our giving thanks to the Lord.

So, friend, chew on this with me and see where you come out.  Nobody, I suspect, will disagree with the adage that “it is right” that we creatures give thanks to the Lord our God.  We have incredible things to thank God for:  at the top of the list is God’s loving us so much he incarnated himself into our human form and died a criminals’ death so that we might have hope for eternal life.  (John 3:16) Yes, indeed, that’s worthy of our thanks! 

But “just” implies correctness, balance, health, morality, and/or right(eousness).  So, stay with me here, how is my saying “Thank You God” any of those characteristics?  Simply put, this is the question:  How is “Thank you God” just?  What the worship leader says next gives a clue, if not the total answer.  After I declare It is Right and Just I usually hear these words:  “It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation to give you thanks.” 

There it is!  It is Right and Just because it is our duty and salvation.  “Duty” is a word which figures greatly in my work as a trial lawyer.  I tell the jury that a defendant doctor “had a duty” to order blood work and a chest x-ray when his patient comes in having coughed up blood for three weeks!  The 34-year-old man died because his doctor had failed his duty.  And the jury of his peers smacked that negligent doctor with a “Just” verdict!  That makes total sense to me. 

But “salvation”?  Ah, yes indeed, when that jury returned its verdict, my client felt that she had received “salvation” and she thanked them (and me) profusely, without hesitation!   The widow (with her 18-month-old father-less son in her arms) could not even think about leaving that courtroom without giving thanks to the jurors as they walked past.

When I contemplate the blessings in my life, they are too numerous to count! For me it is a highlight in any worship service to be challenged to give thanks to the Lord our God.  And the confirmation of that challenge always stirs my soul:  It is Right and Just!  May your efforts to properly thank God be enhanced today by grabbing onto It is Right and Just.  To do less than constantly thank the Lord our God is flat out not right and not just!

God deserves our thanks for all he has done for us. Can I get a witness?

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Advent — To Come To

Being in Southern California on Christmas day is quite an experience weather-wise for this Chicagoan!  Wearing shorts and a tee-shirt in the middle of winter is just not what I am used to.  Maybe I think clearer in such great weather, you can determine, but the word Advent is on my mind today in a whole new way.

Rarely do we even hear, much less use, the word Advent; instead, it is replaced with “The Christmas Season” or “Christmas Day.” How surprised I was, and disappointed, to read this definition in a dictionary of the word advent:  “arrival of something – e.g., advent of spring” with absolutely NO reference to the use of Advent referring to the coming of Christ as a baby in the manger at Bethlehem!

It seems that these days the only place we hear the word Advent used is in a church, and that’s not bad at all, since in church we hopefully can trust that we hear truth!  Advent – To Come To refers to the Creator of the universe coming into the universe in human flesh and blood, a crying baby lying on straw in a Bethlehem animal shelter.

Advent leads to interesting questions, does it not?  Advent – To Come To only to the planet earth?  Other planets out there where God saw fit to incarnate as a baby?  How does incarnation work anyway?  Assuming that the Creator God does not have flesh on bones like we do, just how does God change into flesh and blood?  An interstellar magic show of sorts?

And this one just knocks my intellectual socks off every time I put energy into trying to answer it:  why would a non-human Creator God even want to become flesh and blood like humans?  To “save us from our sins” is the theological answer to my question but that leads to “why did we need to be saved from our sins?”

And finally, this question may strike some as sacrilegious at best, heretical at worst:  Is it possible that God already does have flesh and blood?  Genesis does say, “God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“ [Genesis 1:27 NLT]. So, if we humans were created “in his own image” and we have flesh and blood, then maybe, just maybe, God has flesh and blood too?  Sort of like the famous math formula:  if A=B, and B=C, then A=C too!

And then Advent – To Come To raises a whole other set of questions for me.  Since I have been taught, and believed my entire life, that God is omnipresent – which simply means everywhere – is it not logical to wonder “why did God even need to come to earth as a baby if God was already here?”  Maybe this question is easy to answer:  God was always here on earth, we just couldn’t see God.  But wait, there’s more!  If God was already like humans (i.e., with flesh and blood) then why could we not see God here on earth before Jesus was born in Bethlehem? 

Advent – To Come To is not as easy and simple as “away in a manger” and “oh holy night” seem to make it.  I will leave this to the professional theologians, but invite my blog readers to hit the comment button and leave your thoughts on these questions.  Worth pondering, right?  Especially when it’s 76 degrees out and sunny!

[NOTE:  If your organization, church, or school would like a workshop/presentation on The Merton Prayer please use the contact tab and let me know!  I can Zoom all over the world and have done 90-minute, 3-hour, 5-hour, weekend, or five-day workshops/retreats.]

Leave a comment, if you wish, regarding this post or how you found The Merton Prayer and why it is important to you.  Thanks for visiting http://www.TheMertonPrayer.com!