Listen, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
These commands that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.For today: “The Lord is our God”.
Paul said to the Greeks:
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
The one who created the universe and everything in it is our God – we are his people. To repeat what I wrote yesterday, he is not distant or aloof. He says, “you belong to me, I want you to be close to me.”
King David wrote: Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.
Also in the Psalms, someone (author not known) wrote:
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
In both these passages, I don’t see God stopping trouble from coming into my life. I will have burdens to bear, difficult things will happen in my world. I see something much larger here than immediate protection from trouble. This is about eternity. This is about having a destiny that is beyond
God, be my fortress.
Tuesdays | God is building a people – My relationships are broken
