A REMNANT BRIGHT

It’s hard to keep a sensitive spirit in today’s climate. It’s hard to walk the line sometimes between what is right and what is righteous. It’s sometimes hard keeping the peace when you are told what should be accepted and who should be shut out. It’s hard when the weak are made to be the villain and fingers are quick to point judgement and hands clench into fists.

It is hard when a faith that has brought life and a message of hope is co-opted for gain and mercy is dashed upon the rocks for vengeance. There are absolutes and sin bears a heavy weight. They are seeds that are harvested to death. But we should remember, His message is one of goodness. His message is one of repentance and mercy and peace not brought about by holing up in our warm and safe enclaves and posturing about in our own thin righteousness, but it is by life in the muddy trenches with others that we grow and are known. My life was not changed by rule and power but by mercy and love.

In and of ourselves there is only hatred, loneliness, demonization, despair, rage ruin and decay. This is the way that men who strive to build and rule their own kingdoms live by. But in Him these things don’t exist. The ethics of The Kingdom will always be the opposite of our own.

To you who don’t claim faith, there is hope. And also, to you who hold faith but see the bleakness of these hard days there is hope. I seek to live my life by example of His grace and mercy upon my own. Not by party affiliation, or labels of denomination or even groupthink.

Because, I choose none of these things. They will never define me. I am defined solely by sonship in Him. But the only side that I will take, my only hill that I will stand on is with Him. And Him alone.

He is good and He is worthy and He is long suffering. There is always hope. Because...

We were once foreigners from Him as well… Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.

1 Colossians 1:21-23

So, we too should see others this way and treat them with the same mercy we were shown.

Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:1-8

The road is hard and it is jagged and flinty and unknown, but be of good courage, goodness still shines brilliant if we look for it. And by a common hope together, not alone, we can walk strong and we can live as He would have us. In peace and goodness and joy and mercy. Now, go out into this good day and be the healing balm others so desperately need.