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God's Verbs

In trying to come up with a bulletin cover for this Sunday, we made a Wordle of the Ephesians 1:3-14 reading.




Those are the top 100 words from the reading. Clearly, Christ is the main word. Surprise! Yet, I'm drawn to the verbs- destined, ransomed, intended, blessed, sealed, adopted, believed, chose, received... Almost all of these refer to God's actions toward us (and all creation) through the Living Word, through Jesus, through Christ. We are often too quick to list or listen to harsh verbs about God's action. God does get angry (see: Amos, Ezekiel, Jonah), but typically with just cause. Yet, God's modus operandi- FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME- is not anger, but relationship. The verbs of Ephesians 1 reveal that desire- choosing, blessing, adopting- in a way that we should sit with, respond to, and ponder in our hearts.
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