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Thursday, July 19, 2018

Picture This

So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear!   
(James 1:21-24 MSG)

Don't you just love the phrasing here? The word-pictures are stunning to my mind's eye. I can imagine coming to recognize a life lived less than desirably and then coming to grips with it. The action of scooping up the spoiled virtue and cancerous evil and dumping it into the garbage can. 

Lastly, slapping your hands together as though wiping them clean of the past mistakes, turning abruptly and walking in the opposite direction. Once the new life is begun and the fresh start is before you, things are different...eventually. We all must learn how to live out this new life.
This is where other Christians come into the picture. They can build relationships with us, mentor us and teach us how to live a life as Jesus would have us live. We learn how to love and care for each other. We practice real listening - to our mentors and then to each other as we share life.

And we do all this face-to-face. Not on social media, not in an impersonal text or email, but within touching distance. That is the only way to touch each other's lives. It is the one true way to cultivate real empathy.

I close today with verse 25 of The Message version of this text is completed by these vivid words: But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

James 1:21-25

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