Is God Crying?

Hi again.  This is Judy Kuhns, posting responses to this week’s readings for Judges 7-Ruth 4, Psalms 75-79, and Luke 21-Acts 2, focusing primarily on the way that God is sometimes presented in the OT and the NT.

Remember reading in Deuteronomy, how God repeatedly warned the Israelites what would happen to them if they ever forgot His covenant?  Well, here in Judges that is exactly what they do, living as if God is not their king, doing whatever they liked. Again and again, as soon as they feel safe in the promised land, they revert to all kinds of decadence, not only making idols, but intermarrying with the Canaanites and living extremely wicked, wanton lives.  From Gideon with his golden idol to Samson (a Nazarite, no less, who violates his vows) to the sexually depraved men of Gibeah who remind us of the Sodomites, we have the accounts of a people guilty not only of apostasy but who had strayed as far from God as possible.  The Book of Judges presents God’s chosen living in the abyss of degeneracy. If you, like me, think that God sometimes cries, this must have been one of those times.

Yet no matter how evil we become, God never gives up on us.  The cycles of sin and punishment are always followed by redemption.  This is the undeniable pattern throughout all of the Old Testament: God is always true to his covenant, even if we are not.   

The ultimate redemption comes of course at the end of Luke, which gives us not only the painful story of the crucifixion with all its betrayals but goes on to include the account of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, one of my favorite passages. I like to imagine being there with the disciples, watching them begin to overcome their trepidation and confusion and finally understand all that has happened, moving from outright fear to revelation and recognition.  What a day that must have been for them, after all that they had been through.  It must have changed them forever, so much so that after Pentecost and the Ascension, what do the early Christians do next?  In Acts 2 Luke depicts them living the way we all should live, with love and joy and abundance in every sense, sharing all that they had, and praising God, who must have been dancing. What do you think?  What is God doing now, here in 2013?