Salvogesis

Our scripture that we are looking at today comes from Hosea 6:6 and Matthew 9:13: “But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I desire mercy… Summer is here. On the prairies some people have really fancy cars that live indoors most of the year and only came on nice sunny days. Some of these are CLASSIC cars. Many farmers are also mechanics and so spend a lot of time working on their vehicles. It sort of reminds me of my younger days. I remember when I was a teenager. I was blessed to be able to afford a car that I could fix up a little bit too. Not quite as fancy as those sports cars in Saskatchewan but here’s a picture of it… Okay that’s not my car – that is Fred Flintstone’s mobile but that isn’t entirely dissimilar from my car. My car only cost $100 and see how Fred’s car is propelled… It only moves because he runs with his feet sticking out the bottom. That was sort of like my Pontiac. It, like Fred’s car, didn’t have any floorboards at all o...

My daughters and I went to see SOLO . It was a surprisingly good movie. There was one scene that stuck in my mind. Han was emigrating and an official asked him his name and then he asked him who his people were. Han replied that he didn't have any people; so the surname awarded to him was 'Solo'. When I was studying restorative justice at Simon Fraser University, my instructor asked us the same question for one of our papers: who are your people? I pondered this for a while and wrote a long essay claiming many people as my people: those in The Salvation Army, those in the community that I lived and all the communities in which I have lived before, those in the courts and the prisons where I have ministered, my colleagues, associates, friends, clients, neighbours; anyone I could think of I claimed as my people. Most of all if we submit to the Lord, we are His people. We are part of the family of God. Even if at one point we were not part of God's family when we accep...