More Eschatological Musings

I suppose some might call me a bleeding-heart

because I don’t see punishment that fails to correct

as either useful or just.

Such punishment is merely vengeance.

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Do I want the wicked to be punished?

More than anything I want them redeemed,

restored to love.

Every soul is precious, and without forgiveness,

souls would be lost.

Only grace can do this.

The grace of love, of forgiveness,

of redemption and restoration.

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It makes me angry, those who speak of God, for God,

in terms of rage and vengeance that never ends,

to punish crimes that, however egregious,

are limited in time, in scope—

and are most often, destructive expressions

of broken and wounded souls.

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Maybe I’m wrong in all this.

Maybe God sees some as irredeemable,

some sinners unforgivable.

But He made them thus.

Is this just?

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Some theologians,

while accepting God’s nature as love,

also insist on the satisfaction of His justice,

of the eternal damnation of some (many) souls.

But it's His justice that gives me the same hope as His love.

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For He knows how He made us, and why.

He knows that however far we fall,

He can reach us, He will reach us,

and "will draw everyone to Myself."

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There is nowhere you can go where God isn’t.

I trust God's power to heal, redeem, restore, and forgive

infinitely more than I trust the power of a wayward soul

to defy and deny Him.

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I don’t care what the scribes and Pharisees

tell me about the letter of the law.

God is love.

All else is details.

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There is so little love,

so little faith,

in the hearts of many believers.

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Don’t worry about the fate of the wicked.

God wills "that all shall be saved,"

and He has His ways and means.

No — better to "work out your own salvation

with fear and trembling."

And humility. And faith.

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I seem to keep banging on in scriptural terms?

Is this my lane now?

For now perhaps,

because many of the faithful

don’t listen to the Spirit "in their midst."

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Conform yourself to God’s will for you

in each moment.

Which is to say: surrender.

Abandon self-will.

Which is really to say:

every moment is God’s will for you.

Know that.

.

For the love of God.

Agape.