May 04, 2009 - Monday Meditation (His Hands Over our Own)

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May 04, 2009 - Monday Meditation (His Hands Over our Own)

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Written by Bobot Apit

Sunday, 03 May 2009 05:49

T he hand of Almighty God is never far away, so you can trust the future.

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 42:2-3; 43:3, 4

J ohn 10:1-10 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; (2) but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. (3) To him the gatekeeper opens; the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. (4) When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. (5) A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers." (6) This figure Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. (7) So Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. (8) All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. (9) I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. (10) The thief comes only to steal and kill.

* Meditation by Robert P. Heaney (Creighton)

“God had granted also to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
By the time the Acts of the Apostles was written, the unification of Jews and Gentiles in the early Church was well on its way to being an accomplished fact. That this step was seen as important is indicated by the fact that Peter’s experience is described twice in Acts – first when it happens to Peter and second when he defends what he did to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The need for that defense is an indication that the unification was not accomplished without a struggle. The first Christians, who were, of course, Jews, said “Fine . . . you can come in, but you have to be Jewish first and obey all of our laws. (After all, they’re God’s laws.) Then you can be Christian . . .” But – despite their sincerity and piety – they were wrong, as we now understand. God didn’t require the Gentile Christians to obey all the Jewish rules.

We contemporary Christians might be tempted to think “Well, that’s interesting” or, even perhaps, to be grateful because, after all, we Gentiles are the beneficiaries of that unity. But we can’t stop there; inspired scripture is never just about history – never just about how things came to be the way they are.

As St. Paul says in Romans “All things written in times past were written for our instruction.” We don’t need to be instructed in history to be saved, but we do need to know God’s will. And that will, manifested in this story from Acts, is that God and God’s church are inclusive. There is room for everyone. God wants everyone.

Inclusiveness is as much a challenge for us today as it was for the Jewish Christians two millennia ago. We face issues such as male-female, lay-cleric, black-white, gay-straight, Protestant-Catholic. We say “Well, yes, there’s room for everybody. But first you have to be this or that, and obey all the rules, and change this or that . . . After all, that’s what God wants . . .”

Are we sure?

We need perhaps a little humility here. In several places the Gospels tell us that Jesus went off by Himself to pray. Almost certainly that “prayer” to His Father was “What is Your will in this situation? What do you want me to do?” We should do no less before deciding we know God’s will. How many times – and in how many places – has God told us “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts”?

When we become alert to this theme of inclusiveness, we find it in many places throughout the New Testament (e.g., John 11:52; Acts 10:34–35; 11:17; Romans 10:12; 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11; Eph 3:2–6, etc.) and even the Old (Is 60:1–7), but most clearly in Paul’s soaring phrases from Galatians (3:28–29): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

If that seems somehow wrong to us, well . . . it should. Paul calls it a “mystery” and says that this insight came not through human sources but by direct revelation from God. It is one manifestation of what is meant by the phrase “a new creation”. God has made something completely new – unprecedented. This understanding could not have had human origins. Humans reject the other, the stranger. For humans, it’s “them” and “us”.
But for God it’s just “us” – always “us”.

* Supplementary Reading
Hands Above Your Own

I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. – Psalm 16:8

When my son Robert was nine years old he wanted to learn to drive my car. So one day I let him sit between my legs behind the steering wheel and drive the car around the ten-acre church grounds. His little white-knuckled hands strangled the steering wheel, but he managed to maneuver the turns and bring the car back to its parking spot. When we went home for lunch that day, you should have heard him boast to his mother and older sister, "I drove the car, Mommy, all by myself! Really I did!"

Happy but foolish child. My big hands were only a fraction of an inch over his all the time and my foot was on the gas pedal had I needed to take over. The hand of Almighty God is never far away, so you can trust the future.

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Is there something you've always wanted to do but have been too afraid to try? Venture out and take a risk. God will make course corrections where they are needed.

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Note: This excerpt was taken from the "Power for Life Daily Devotional"