open arms
ok. i know this video is a bit silly, but that is one great journey song. hopefully you can appreciate a voice like steve perry. but as silly as that parody video is, isn’t that sort of how god is to us, doing anything to get back the one he loves?
this morning i read 2 chronicles 30:1, 5-9. hezekiah ivited all of israel and judah to come to the temple of god in jerusalem and celebrate passover with him because he felt no one living had ever partied properly.
::begin disrespectful side bar:: it says, “and they sent out the invitation from one end of the country to the other, from beersheba in the south to dan in the north.” somehow i don’t think that beersheba lacked in the partying properly category. ::end disrespectful side bar::
hezekiah’s goal for this celebration was to get people to repent of their sins and come back to god’s grace. isn’t that what churches are doing every week? “hey strager, uh…i don’t know you but…er….why don’t you come check out my church this sunday?” we are inviting them back into god’ grace. in the devotional i’m reading, it took the verse and talks about how we all need to come back to god if we have walked away, and how we need to be less pigheaded. upon reading this, though, and thinking hard on it i feel like it says something different to me. i think this passage is aimed at us, the body of the church of god. i think, just like hezekiah, we need to offer these “lost people” a place to truly come back to for celebration. we need to not only provide them this service (or whatever you choose to call it) but live it as well. i don’t know about you, but those are some lofty goals to set. but hey, the worst thing we could do is fail never try at all.