The End of the Law

As I read the following passage for "Come Follow Me" with my family last night, I experienced my usual confusion reading Paul's words: 

Romans 9:31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.

32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;

What??

After we discussed it, I think it means that even if we follow the law every day of our life and it doesn't change our hearts, it is of no use.

There's a quote by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity that goes along the lines of: God didn't make up commandments to see if we would follow them and be obedient. Rather commandments embrace the very laws by which God himself lives.  Following the commandments are intended to help us to become like Him.

So if we seek to honor the letter of the law but refuse to let the Spirit of the law touch our hearts, it does us no good. In the end, we attain nothing. 

Shards

 SHARDS

Shattered, broken, deadly…

A lifetime of mistakes lay before me

In overwhelming hues.

Looking around,

I don’t know where to go,

What to do.

Who am I…

…Other than a thousand bits

Of splintered, senseless

Colored glass?

But then,

Ever so gently,

I feel the pieces lovingly gathered,

Delicately and deliberately rearranged,

Making sense of

The sadness,

The heartache,

The mistakes,

The flaws,

The cracked ugly pieces

Of my broken soul.

Patterns form

As I submit

To this brutally tender rearrangement,

Allowing myself to float,

To move,

To break even further

Under the hands

Of the Master Craftsman.

The lead is placed

Deliberately

Between the gaps of the

Broken, colored pieces…

An Atonement of Love

Sealing,

Soldering the pattern into place

In the furnace of redemption.

“What are you doing?”

My soul cries out.

“These pieces are broken,

Ugly,

Unredeemable!

I am still but a cacophonic collection

Of worthless,

Fragmented,

Melted sand.”

My heart hung in shame,

The Master Craftsman

Gently reaches,

Lovinging lifting me into place.

“Just watch,”

He whispers.

Light--

His light!--

Shines through my brokenness

I gasp,

As I see I have become

His stained glass masterpiece.

(Image from Stained glass window, fantasy woman portrait. Generative ai By FantasyEmporium https://stock.adobe.com/images/stained-glass-window-fantasy-woman-portrait-generative-ai/553267928)

The Skunks in our Lives

Crazy story: I was up at 5 am (not the craziest part) and noticed that the front porch light was on. Piper had heard Lucky (my parent's cat) meowing outside our windows. I took Lucky back over to my parent's house and walked around the back of the house to take him and his sister, Miracle, to where the food was. Guess who I saw? 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SSrvoBtdeEURErYc8

The cats wisely backed away and I tried to figure out how to scare away the happily feasting intruder while avoiding smelling "wonderful" for days. I decided to go into the house and try and scare it away safely from the other side of the glass patio doors, which worked.

I let the cats into the porch, closed it off and left them food and water. 

As I drove away, I thought about how sometimes the people around us (or we ourselves) are like skunks--with natural built-in responses that are less than desirable, probably developed in combination of childhood/teen environments and natural man weaknesses. Sometimes we need to consider how we handle them this way: recognizing that yes, we can trigger the proverbial "odor," but no, it's not necessarily because we are doing anything wrong. But we can take preventative measures and we can be respectful and creative in maneuvering solutions around it. But the skunk is still just a cute little animal trying to survive and protect itself. No reason to feel any animosity toward it...just wariness . A little healthy wariness/awareness can go a long way to develop a viable relationship with the cute little skunks in our lives .