Ron Buford: Nice

"For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well . . .  When they gathered the congregation together, they . . . rejoiced at the exhortation." - Acts 15: 22-33

The inebriated aunt of a friend, maligning belief in God's radical acceptance of all people, slurred, "Honey! Make no mistake about it. God is not nice."  

Our view of God is often determined by our earliest parent memory-until we reshape it as adults. For many with harsh, stern, hurtful memories, a God breakthrough is essential. And when that breakthrough comes, it can be hard to accept. Many who think they have rejected God have simply not yet had a breakthrough. Unhappy Christians are the same.  

The law can be bad news for the poor: You don't have money to renew your driver's license; you drive to work to get paid to renew it; you get stopped and put in jail; you lose your job. Such a life, foreign to many, is a way of life for millions.  

Each of our lives has some weighing poverty from which we similarly cannot seem to escape. But Jesus says, "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest."  When we get it right, we discover and convey a God who is not mean and mutilating but life-giving and liberating. Reject the unhappy, stuck people's view of a mean, avenging God who only slander God. Embrace the true God of life and possibility.  

Honey, make no mistake about it, God is nice!. 

Prayer

Free us from the burdens and poverty that weigh us down; free us for a needed breakthrough to you, O God.  Let us discover the true You, the God of life and possibility.  Amen.

From UCC's StillSpeaking Devotionals. Visit UCC.org