This week I've been using for my devotional reading the "Divine Hours." The Collect for the Week seemed to hit on the head, so to speak, the root for all the troubles our world is facing. The prayer goes like this:
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in Your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the world, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under His most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
I find it interesting that I no longer hear a phrase that was often used to sum up people. It was something like "people are basically good." Unfortunately, no, people aren't basically good.
We want things our way. We want others to follow our way. We become angry when people won't follow our way. We feel we have every reason to strike out, verbally or physically, if people don't reform themselves and see it our way.
But Jesus Christ has freed us from such thinking. The new life that began in us at our baptism, the washing away of the sin that separates us from God, has freed us to live a new way, following the will of the Lord. We put God first. We love as Jesus loved. We love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. We reflect the love of Jesus to the world and show that there is another way to live, a different way to go.
In this life we face opposition to God's way. But as the Collect says, one day we will live under the most gracious rule of Jesus. Our King of kings and Lord of lords will gather us together, all who confess Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, and rule over us for all eternity. Hatred, selfishness and evil will be banished forever. We have something to look forward to, something we can hardly imagine now. But God has promised it to all who seek to live His way.
Motivated by the love of Jesus, let us seek God's way and will and show the world there is a different way to live.
