[Dailydevo] Daily Devotion Thursday June 8, 2006

[bludwig at zlc-aa.org]

Daily Devotions  Thursday, June 8, 2006

This is the week that follows the day of Pentecost. It is the season of the
Holy Spirit who transforms God's people with energy into people of the
Kingdom of God. What does the Spirit breathe into us? This week Pastor
Ludwig will explore that question.

 

Acts 2: 23-24

“this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and  foreknowledge
of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless  men.  But God
raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible
for him to be held by it.”

 

Killing & Making Alive

Last week as I walked alone, along the outside of the southeastern wall of
the old city of Jerusalem, I was surrounded by the graves of a Moslem
cemetery. In the midst of thinking of the irony that Jewish graves were
identical except for the language written on the stones, an Israeli soldier
stopped me and with hand on his sub-machine gun which was obliquely pointed
at me said, “Who are you?”  How appropriate I thought, an encounter with
death in the middle of a cemetery.  “A tourist” I replied. “From where?” his
voice demanded.  “America…Michigan…Ann Arbor,” I said impatiently (I was
late as usual and needed to get back to the Lutheran Guest House for
supper). “Go,” was the one word response accompanied by the wave of the gun
barrel.  We walk through much injustice and death in our world and yes, in
our lives.  Not only do we feel the dead-cold cruelty of this life, we too
kill others with cruel and thoughtless words; we allow people on the other
side of the world to be destroyed through our own indifference.

 

On Pentecost, Peter proclaimed that our God is a God of life and not death.
Jesus is the seal and the proof. He was killed by human resentment, fear and
greed but death could not dare to hold him. In his resurrection he
proclaimed life and hope in the midst of a world filled with death. Those
who follow Christ are more than set free from death, they are commissioned
to boldly stand against all that kills the heart and soul of a humanity for
whom Jesus gave his own life. Who will you make alive today in the name of
Christ?


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