I want piggy back off of what Ron said here and say that most of the time we read Romans through the lens of the individual. What happens when we re-read the book of Romans as a community? Today we read the first seven verses and Paul is already speaking in "community" terms: "…among all the Gentiles", "you are also among them…", "To all those loved by God…" This continues into verses 16-17 as well and I would be willing to bet if we read the book through we would see a lot of places where Paul is interested in the community as a whole as well as the individual. What does this mean? I have no idea, but it is why I love to read the Bible. I have a degree from the great ACU and I have never thought about this before! I've so enjoyed these last couple of weeks because there is so much of the text that becomes new to me every time we do something like this!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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I cannot describe how much I love spending time each evening reading these scriptures with my family. Tonight we were talking about grace and trying to define it for our boys. Isaac piped in and said "I thought Grace was the name for a girl...you know from that song on your ipod." (OK, let me clarify. Yes, he's five, and yes he remembered that line from the U2 song entitled "Grace" when I let him listen to my ipod one day.) Anyway, we listened to that song together and read the lyrics and they actually explained grace to them (and us) better than we could define it. I'd like to share a few of my favorite lines:
Grace, she takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain.
Grace finds beauty in everything.
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty out of ugly things.
How awesome to think of God's grace for our sin in these terms. Thinking comunally though, wouldn't it make a huge impact if we were a group of people who showed each other and our community this grace on a regular basis?
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