Thoughts for Today

RESURRECTION

In this light of resurrection, the disciples had to go through a massive renewal of their thinking. Seeing the once-dead Jesus now standing before their eyes brought them to what was a radical new way of understanding the Messiah. Of course, this is in addition to the radical suspension of the well-understood laws of nature with which they also had to grapple. Despite the quick dismissal from modernity, no mind is so primitive so as to believe that all is usual when bodies rise from the dead.

These events remain similarly radical today. On the day that Jesus rose from the dead, he spoke of himself saying, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). As if resurrection was not hard enough to grasp, it is vastly difficult to see how there could be glory in suffering. Yet it is not hard to see that the death of Christ carries with it the force of something much more. The glory of the suffering Messiah lies in the magnitude of the love he showed on the cross. --Stuart McAllister, Slice of Infinity

PSALMS
"The Psalms are God's prayer book especially for us. Jesus had them memorized. They express the full range of human emotion--frustration, pain, faithlessness, but also happiness, joy & steadfastness. They tell us who God is & how He regards us. They have their own contexts, like prayers for royal events. But they console us now because they tell us that God acted in the past, even as He promises to act today & shall continue to act for the well-being of His saints into the future (Psalm 145). --Matthew Harrison, The Lutheran Witness, Aug. 2019