BUT GOD

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions -- it is by grace you have been saved... through faith.”  (Ephesians 2:4,5,8a NIV)

I confess that I am an unreconstructed optimist. Not a naïve one; I’ve lived too long for that, long enough to have experienced a resounding case of pessimism. I have vivid memories of the Great Depression, and I’ve lived through several wars and those international anomalies that we call police actions. I’ve watched what has seemed to me to be a rather steady decline in both public and private morals and a growing confusion about ethics. And of course, I’ve watched the increasing prevalence of both evil and inanity (sometimes they’re synonymous) on television and the Internet.

But, there is God. And because there is God, there is goodness. I profoundly believe that God is at work in our world and that our planet has not yet been written off as a lost cause. History seems to tell me that though our human race appears so often to dedicate itself to its own destruction [see Ephesians 2:1-3], God is always at work -- usually, I think, behind the scenes. And because of God, faith, love, and goodness keep being reborn.

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas in “Life from the Upside: Seeing God at Work in the World”


#4619