Set Apart As Holy, Once and For All

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I had a revelation a few years back. If you're not an animal person, I need you to go with me on this one. We did not grow up with animals in the house and I could never think of anything more filthy or disgusting than having some creature roaming around wiping itself on my possessions. Couple that with the fact that not only am I allergic to everything that grows or flies through the air (aloe? the healing plant? allergic. thanks.), I am DREADfully allergic to animal dander, especially cats.

Cut to: my husband who grew up with always having a dog and sometimes having a dog and a cat around the house and then his best friend dying and bequeathing his cat to us in his will. 

Wuhl, the circumstances of that poor kitty's life up to the point we brought him home were tragi-que. His father got him when he was a baby and then two years later his his daddy was in the hospital for the last few months of his life and the poor kitty was all alone in a one bedroom apartment being cared for by a rota of caring friends, but no one was spending nights with him and this cat was sad and lonely. We baby-sat him a couple of times and I have to tell you, even though I didn't like animals, this cat is a GENTLEman ... he truly is one of the sweetest creatures I've ever met in my life. SO loving, SO attentive, SO caring about you and your needs and emotions. So, God Rest His Soul, my husband's friend passes and my maternal instincts kick in and we rush over to the apartment, pick the kitty up, and bring him to our home.

Dissolve to: a couple of weeks later, he had a hair ball. They get hair balls. They "leave" the hair balls in convenient and obvious places so you can find them. I woke up before dawn one day, stumbled out to the dining room table to get my glasses and clothes sos I could make coffee and I STEP on the hair ball. It's sort of like stepping on a piece of rotting fruit. I sorta freaked, he came up to my leg to console me with a caress and I had that FLASH where you can either COMMIT to being angry, or you can let God's compassion flow through you and disengage. Praise God compassion came quickly to my mind that this poor creature did not ASK to come and live in our home, I made the choice to BRING the cat in to our home. And then I got it:

God created us specifically. God fashioned us with great care inside our mother's womb, knit us, stitch by stitch, to bring us in to this world for God's own pleasure. If I love that cat for being that cat, how much more does God love us just for being us. The things we do don't surprise God ... God knew before the beginning of the world what we'd be up to. If we're petulant or cranky or deliberate idiots God doesn't smite us, God probly goes, "oh, brother, would you snap OUT of this?" 

Each of us is our own greatest champion. Conversely, each of us can be our own worst enemy. It is said that true self-love, true forgiveness, true trust in God, is realising there is NOTHING we can do to affect the past.

Do you get that? Nothing.

But many of us are so bloody comfortable with the past that we wear it like an old sweater, wrapped up in its dis-ease, pointing out the holes and the flaws to anyone who will listen. WE can't let the past go because WE'RE not through forgiving ourselves ... and sometimes we blame everyone else for our past, sometimes we blame ourselves for our past but the ridiculous thing is we blame the unforgiveness on God. There is nothing God HAS NOT ALREADY forgiven.

Micah 7:18-19
Who is a God like you?
You forgive sin and overlook the rebellion of your faithful people.
You will not be angry forever, because you would rather show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us.
You will overcome our forgetfulness of your love.
You will throw all our transgressions into the deep sea of forgetfulness.

The deep sea of forgetfulness. Wrap your brain around that one. This would infer that every time we re-visit our sins, every time we accuse ourselves of the past, God says, "I have no idea what are you TALKING about" because all of those things are not only in the PAST, God doesn't even remember them.

1 John 2:1-2
I write this, dear children, to guide you out of your self-accusation. If anyone does sin or transgress, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world's.

I'm not an huge fan of ye 'ole KJV, but they use a word there I love: 

And Jesus is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Propitiate: to conciliate, to reconcile with, to overcome the distrust or animosity of an offended power; to appease.

Romans 10:8-25
Christ said, "You did not want sacrifices, offerings, burnt offerings, and sacrifices for sin. You did not approve of them.” (These are the sacrifices that Moses’ Teachings require people to offer.) Then Christ says, “I have come to do what you want.” Christ did away with sacrifices in order to establish the obedience that God wants. We have been set apart as holy because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do by sacrificing his body once and for all. Once. And For All.

Every day each priest performed his religious duty. He offered the same type of sacrifice again and again. Yet, these sacrifices could never take away sins. However, Jesus, this chief priest, made one sacrifice for sins, and this sacrifice lasts forever. ... With one sacrifice he accomplished the work of setting us apart for God forever.

The Holy Spirit tells us the same thing: “This is the promise that I will make to them after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will put my teachings in their hearts and write them in their minds.’ ” Then he adds, “I will no longer hold their sins and their disobedience against them.”

As sins are forgiven, and forgotten, there is no longer any need to sacrifice for sins.

Brothers and sisters, because of the blood of Jesus we can now confidently go into the holy place, the Holy of Holies, beyond the veil, into the very presence of God. Jesus has opened a new and living way for us to go through the curtain. (The curtain is his own body.) ... We have been sprinkled with his blood to free us from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with clean water. So we must continue to come to him with a sincere heart and strong faith. We must continue to hold firmly to our declaration of faith. The one who made the promise is faithful. 

We must also consider how to encourage each other to show love and to do good things. We should not stop gathering together with other believers, as some of you are doing. Instead, we must continue to encourage each other even more as we see the day of the Lord coming.

That's a lot all at once. However, two things are evident: (1) Jesus did all the work in propitiation of our sins, ONCE and for every person who ever lives, and (2) we shouldn't keep to our own company because we can be our own worst enemy ... we should gather together to encourage one another speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to God (Ephesians 5:19).

Finally:

Psalm 103:12
As far as the east is from the west, and as far as sunrise is from sunset, so far has God removed our sins from us.

My Rector said something BEAUtiful the other day. She wasn't talking about our topic here, but she WAS talking about change. I hope it resonates with you:

Stay tuned. [Change] is exciting. God is doing a new thing. God is always doing new things but sometimes we’re so busy loving and clinging to the old things we can’t see the new things because our eyes are full of tears that the old is passing away. Change is hard but that is the way we embrace marvelous new possibilities and become ready for the future God invites us into. God is in the process of our becoming and our struggle to get there. God is in the frustration and work required on the journey. I would say that the most significant learnings and discoveries are in the journey, in the messy process. [We must] refuse to quit hoping so that we can see our hopes fulfilled.

thanks for sharing, i'm sure, your auntie dasch
xoxoxo