Friday February 23rd: The spirit of the law
February 23, 2024
Sunday February 25th: And there came a voice from the cloud
February 25, 2024
“Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:43-48
‘We can do hard things.’ This is the mantra one online instructor uses to motivate her followers through rough parts of a workout. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you get the extra energy to triumphantly power through to the end. More often though you decide against the extra effort, decide you’ve reached your limit, but you tell yourself, you’ll do better next time. Okay then.
Jesus asks hard things of us today. Hard, because I don’t want to love my enemy. I don’t want to even think about those persecuting me long enough to pray for them. If I don’t like you, I will most certainly save my greeting and pass you like a full bus, only faster. How then do we grow to perfection? How do we achieve fifty-pound faith with five-pound effort? If we want to be exceptional, we have to put in the work to build our spiritual muscle. That means undoing the old programming and adopting a new mindset. The goal is to be like God.
