God, Are You Angry?

I’ve been fighting with the lexicon and our interpretations of Scripture, this week, because that totally makes sense in the midst of a time when I have almost no wiggle room in my schedule…  Typical L…

Jeremiah 30:22-24:

“‘So you will be my people,
    and I will be your God.’

See, the storm of the Lord
    will burst out in wrath,
a driving wind swirling down
    on the heads of the wicked.
The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back
    until he fully accomplishes
    the purposes of his heart.
In days to come
    you will understand this” (NIV).

Just in case you didn’t know (because I sure didn’t), the word we translate here to “wrath,” is actually closer to “heat.”  Maybe that doesn’t make a difference, at all, but I think it might.  Maybe instead of a vengeful God, we have a passionate one who relentlessly works until “he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart…” which might be lovingly forming us into God’s people.

In reading this passage, anew; I certainly think God is frustrated—perhaps even angry—but I’m not convinced that translates to punishment, death, and destruction!  Sometimes aggravation precedes realization.  Maybe it translates to prevenient grace, persuasion, and redemption (because all of that stuff looks like a raging storm, too).  Or maybe I haven’t reached the day when I understand this, at all.  It could go either way.

L.

This “Lame Duck” Week

Revelation 21:5-6, “…I am making everything new…  It is done…”

It’s been awhile since I have blogged here at “These Ordinary Days.”  How appropriate that they are now coming to an end.  I guess this page will need an Advent facelift for the next several weeks! 

As I went to read the daily office, this morning, I realized that I had left my Sacred Ordinary Days journal at home, so I clicked over to the “backup” site I use to gather the daily office Scriptures when I find myself in this predicament.  Strangely, it had already transitioned to the Year B readings, which apparently start on Thursday.  It’s Monday.  Is there no Scripture for Monday? 

Well, of course there is, but this all got me to thinking about how miserable we (ahem… I) do transitions and also about how this might be something of a “lame duck” week… sandwiched between everything ordinary and extraordinary… a place where we pause to think about how everything is over and everything is beginning again, but nothing is actually happening right now.  And since that is pretty much exactly what these phrases from Revelation (finally found the daily office) seem to indicate; I guess it’s true.

And yet, there is this one thing that remains… 

Psalm 117:2, “For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever” (NIV).

Is love and faithfulness enough to sustain us in times of seemingly nothing-else-ness (humor me, sometimes I have to create new words)?  I think so, but waiting is so hard… 

L.