Wednesday, March 11th

Today’s selection comes from Luther Seminary’s Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross:

Related Scripture: Romans 5:1–11

“Oh, my!” my maternal Grandma Klemm would exclaim in her spontaneously breathy yet forceful near-whisper. She might have done exactly that having just read out loud—always out loud—this Romans 5 text as her nightly bedtime chapter of Scripture. Here the apostle Paul once again seems almost unable to hold himself back or corral his words. He piles up one rhetorical flourish after another so that readers are hardly given a moment to breathe in deeply the weight of each succeeding claim.

“For while we were still weak … while we were still sinners … while we were still enemies …” “Oh, my!” No scarcity of strength, no travesty of trust, no ungodliness of life can prevent this God’s abundance of love and wideness of mercy and depth of bodily communion with us.

“Oh, my!” Is it possible that we, too, stand with this Paul, flagrantly boasting of his situation of peace with this God in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit?

Thank you for blessing us and calling us to be yours, Lord Jesus Christ. You have made us your beloved, no matter where we live. Amen.