Justice And Peace Have Embraced

Hello! and happy mid-week to all of us; and, it's just 9 days to go before Christmas, GUYS.  For our "food for the soul" this Wednesday:

THE GOOD NEWS (16 December 2015)

"Would that I hear GOD's proclamation, that HE promise peace to HIS people, HIS saints - lest they come back to their folly.  Yet HIS salvation is near to those who fear HIM, and HIS Glory will dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness have met; righteousness and peace have embraced.  Faithfulness will reach up from the earth while justice bends down from heaven.  The LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit.  Justice will go before HIM, and peace will follow along HIS path." - Psalm 85:9-14

Israelites Returning From Captivity In Babylon 

 (The salvation that GOD brings us is a marriage between heaven and earth, a shared project between GOD and humans.  CHRIST is simultaneously the plenitude of GOD and the fruit of the earth.

This psalm, written when the Israelites had returned from captivity in Babylon adopts the most universal terms of the human vocabulary:  liberty, life, joy, salvation, love, justice, peace, happiness.

This return of the exiled Jews, however, was only one step towards authentic liberation.  Nothing is definitive and each phase in the realization of GOD's plan leads us to another stage.  GOD's people are forever being called to go further ahead.  Even the actual reign of the risen CHRIST and the work of salvation accomplished by the Church are only an image of the eternal kingdom.

GOD loves our earth. When we feel troubled and discouraged by so much that is ugly around us, let us come back to the declaration of this psalm.  You have favored your land, O LORD; justice bends down from heaven; glory will dwell in our land.

Salvation comes from GOD, but it is brought by a man, CHRIST, freely welcomed by a woman in the name of humanity.  With the incarnation, it is not possible to believe in GOD without believing in humankind.)