February 24, 2017

I hope you’re having a good day, Church, and I hope you are making plans to gather together for worship at Manchester this Sunday.
We worship a God who is great, who does wondrous things, and who alone is God (Psalm 86:10). Shockingly, God’s glory and holiness doesn’t keep him from meeting us in the mire. In fact, it’s in his very nature to include, to gather together, and to show compassion even to those who appear to be enemies. We see all this most clearly when we watch God at work in Jesus his son.
Last week, we read the story of Jesus and a Samaritan woman of questionable reputation. That episode in John 4 challenged us to move beyond stereotypes in order to make the most of our opportunities to share God’s good news with our neighbors. But some of our neighbors don’t seem so loveable. Some people in our world seem a lot more like enemies, and it’s easy to make excuses, to keep to ourselves, and neglect our mission. Maybe we’re busy. Maybe we’re afraid of the uncertain consequences of our actions. Maybe we even think some people are unworthy of God’s mercy and our compassion.
And we’d be correct, because none of us are worthy of God’s mercy. We know, nonetheless, that God freely and abundantly offers his mercy to everyone who will listen to him and humbly come to him to receive it. He shows mercy to me and to you and even to those who we see as our enemies. God does this because he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15).
If we love God, then we must also love those he loves. I hope we’ll all be convicted to live more compassionately as we explore Jesus’ teaching in Luke 10 this Sunday. We meet at 9:00am at 595 Manchester Turnpike in Manchester, Connecticut. Please join us if you can.
God bless,
Patrick Barber