Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of the group Casting Crowns singing … Broken Together … poignantly singing of how all Christians need to be doing all we can to put broken pieces together in our relationships, especially in marriages, reflecting the wholeness of a relationship bonded in/by Christ.
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Highlight Verse[s]: Matthew 5:9 [NLT] … 9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.
… We who are called by His Name should be peacemakers.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Matthew 5:9, 13-16 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus blesses those who do all they (we) can to bring brokenness into wholeness.
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Reference Passage : … Romans 9:21-24 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK … USE THIS LINK …
… God is the ultimate/complete “Potter,” Who makes us from broken pieces of pottery into more functional pieces, … tho broken, … but can be used for His glory.
Reference Passage : … Ephesians 2:19-22 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Paul, explains that Jesus is the cornerstone on Whom we should rebuild our broken lives into the structure of His wholeness.
Reference Passage : … 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 [NLT] … 23 Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. 24 God will make this happen, for He Who calls you is faithful.
… Paul exhorts fellow Christians (that’s us too!) to be the expressions of God’s peace [“shalom”] and His Spirit-led wholeness.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Winn Collier, uses an illustration from how divorce describes a lot of the brokenness in this world, which we as Christians should do all we can to mend into “shalom” for Christ. … The ODB author wrote: In the documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, author Berry spoke of how divorce describes the state of our world. We’re divorced from one another, from our history, from the land. Things that should be whole are split apart. When asked what we should do about this sad fact, Berry said, “We can’t put everything back together. We just take two things and put them together.” We take two things broken apart and make them one again.
I agree with Wendell Berry (no relation, BTW) in the ODB entry today … that divorce is an apt word picture for what we’re seeing in this world; … brokenness all around that seems to beg for those who’re willing to be the “peacemakers” Jesus spoke of in His sermon on the mount [see highlight passages], where God expresses His desire that we, as His peacemakers, do all we can to mend brokenness into wholeness, which is the Hebrew concept of “shalom.”
And I think the Japanese art form of “Kintsugi” [see photo] depicts this process nicely. As in the photo, broken pottery is mended by artisans with pure gold to create broken, but beautifully mended - and very functional - pieces of pottery. It’s what the group Casting Crowns sings about with regard to broken marriages being mended to the glory of God [see linked song].
What can we do today to be God’s peacemakers and do all we can to mend brokenness into the “shalom” of Christ’s call for togetherness in His image? As the group Casting Crowns sings, “let us be broken together.”
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for being the gold which mends our brokenness into the wholeness of Your image.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that all reading here can, and will, join me to do all we can to be His peacemakers. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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