God is listening

Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend you heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for his is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

Goodness those are wonderful words: He relents from sending calamity.Now, one can take that a couple of ways. First, the fact he is relenting from something means he has done so in the past. That's scary. Second, the fact he is relenting means he can so choose to no do so in the future. In any case, calamity, that which runs through my days, has been shut down. So says the Bible. So says the Lord.

Oh, uh, wait. There was a condition. We must return to the Lord our God for this to occur. There lies the rub.

In this territory of Saints Dats and Mardis Gras revelers, it's hard to see where we've returned to the Lord. It really is. I can only say that judging is not my forte'. I simply must wait to see who is up there, if you know what I mean.

The greater issue is can I personally return to the Lord. That means can I read daily from his Word. Can I pray at least daily? Can I love daily (the hardest of them all). Can I turn cheeks when I want to turn fists?

Joel says that we are to rend our hearts, not our garments. I take that to mean we are to let our hearts talk, not the way we dress or the way we talk or the way we do certain things. Let our love show, not our rules. Let our zest for love show, not our worship styles even.

If we do so, the Bible says He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing. In another place, the Bible says his grace is sufficient.

Clearly that means his grace and mercy is enough for us, the blessing that never ceases, the blessing that wips away even calamity.

Today that is enough. Tomorrow? I'm working on it.