“Already There“, by Rev. Peter von Herrmann
When discussing what Methodists believe, we quickly come to our greatest emphasis – grace. We believe that God is with us. We believe that God cares for us before we even know it, that God through Jesus Christ forgives our sin in grace, and that through grace we can grow throughout our lives to become more like Jesus. We call these prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace, respectively.
As Paul demonstrates in today’s scripture, yearning for God is a universal part of being human. We have the joy of knowing the one who bridges the gap between our sinful lives and the God who made us and loves us, so that we might be in relationship and fulfill that yearning within us.
In knowing Jesus we become aware of the chasm between who we are and who we should be. Yet we can rejoice because, despite that chasm, the grace and love of God persist. Because of that grace, we can grow to be like Jesus in all that we say and do.
May we be mindful that we are imperfect. May we faithfully grow to be more like Jesus, to conform ourselves into his image. And may we have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
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