I am sitting on my front deck writing this blog entry at six in the evening. It is September 7 and the temperature is 26C (79F for those that think in those degrees). I have no idea what the weather will be like tomorrow but I want to grab this evening as this is what I think of when I think of later summer / early fall in Regina; beautiful hot days and cool nights. For those of you who are wondering, this is what heaven is going to be like.
I am feeling very grateful this evening for things both trivial, the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the “Banjo Bowl,” to the more significant, I was able to preach at both services without my newly repaired knee requiring me to sit on a stool.
I am also feeling grateful that when it comes to God the only debt I owe is the debt of love that Paul talks about in Romans. I come from a religious background that seemed to be all about paying God back for a bunch of stuff that he said were gifts. It has taken me a long time to even get to this point of getting over that. Passages of scripture like this one, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8) are very helpful to me.
This Sunday I tried to help us see how this notion of a “debt of love” is both easy and hard. Easy in that it is easy to love the people we like and hard when we love the people we don’t like. There is more to it than that but I hope you will find one or both of these sermons useful in figuring out who and how to love.
Knox Presbyterian Pay your debts
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Pay your debts
I am looking forward to the balance of this liturgical year, seeing what it holds for us.
Blessings
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