Today's Midweek Meditation - Wednesday, November 11, 2020

 Today's Midweek Meditation

Read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

¹⁶From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I used the following story during my sermon last Sunday as an illustration for my point about serving God, but I think it deserves to be repeated in today's context from 2 Corinthians.

It's a story about Nelson Mandela’s life from the book Chicali Wall by Echeverría Martínez.

"After becoming President, I asked some of my bodyguard members to go for a walk in town.  After the walk, we went for lunch at a restaurant.  We sat in one of the most central ones, and each of us asked what we wanted.  After a bit of waiting, the waiter who brought our menus appeared, at that moment I realized that at the table that was right in front of ours there was a single man waiting to be served.

When he was served, I told one of my soldiers: go ask that man to join us.  The soldier went and transmitted my invitation.  The man stood up, took the plate and sat next to me.  While eating, his hands were constantly shaking and he didn't lift his head from the food. When we finished, he waved at me without even looking at me, I shook his hand and walked away!

Soldier said to me:

- Madiba, that man must be very sick as his hands wouldn't stop shaking while he was eating.

Not at all!  The reason for his tremor is another - I replied.  They looked at me weird and said to them:

- That man was the guardian of the jail I was locked up in.  Often, after the torture I was subjected to, I screamed and cried for water and he came to humiliate me, he laughed at me and instead of giving me water he urinated on my head.

He wasn't sick, he was scared and shook maybe fearing that I, now that I'm president of South Africa, would send him to jail and do the same thing he did with me, torturing and humiliating him.  But that's not me, that behavior is not part of my character nor my ethics.  Minds that seek revenge destroy states, while those that seek reconciliation build Nations.′′

And here is the line that I want you to focus on today, "Minds that seek revenge destroy states, while those that seek reconciliation build Nations."  We must be reconciled with one another and be in the business of reconciling with one another.  It is our joy and obligation as a Christian.