Devotions

… for the week of March 16, 2025

Judgement in the Name of the Lord

Some of us in the room, likely more of us than we imagine, know what a conviction is like. We’ve had experience with a physical, undisputable, black-robed conviction, the kind handed down by a judge or jury. It’s a statistical fact that nearly half of the American population is personally affected in some way by the criminal justice system. Those numbers are staggering; even more so is the weight of guilt that welds itself to the convicted one’s shame like steel clenching iron. To be convicted, found guilty as charged, is no small matter.

It is with such certainty and severity that Jesus unleashes his anguish over Jerusalem—anger and grief that rail with the reverberations of a gavel’s blow in the courtroom when words, sharpened for penetration, are pronounced from behind a high bench. Judgments can last a lifetime, and they intentionally have the power to change futures. Jesus was about the work of God, to change futures.

There is no courtroom, no black robe, no jury of twelve peers in Luke’s account of Jesus’ encounter with some Pharisees. But there is an exacting judgment that rumbles like rolling boulders, a conviction meant to loiter hauntingly like shivering nightmares. Jesus’ words prosecute with a burden that few gospel lines expose so solemnly; the accusations are decisive. His judgment falls on the religious.

No, we do not escape, do not get away by dismissing Jesus’ words as ancient, frozen in a time long past, petrified among a people long gone, meant only for some others’ failures—not our own. The judgment lives on. Pronounced then in the holy city, it ricochets even now through our sacred spaces and hallowed sanctuaries, aimed at the pious and devout who with self-appeasing righteousness look to tame God’s word, rebuff God’s scandalous mercies, silence God’s voice, and break God’s will.

The judgment: “How often . . . and you were not willing!” And yet, the promise: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” (Luke 13:34-35).

… How God Loves Us – Devotion

In a world where love often feels conditional and fleeting, God’s love stands apart—unearned, unchanging, and undeserved. This short booklet explores what Scripture teaches about the depth, certainty, and reality of God’s love for sinners.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GtBkKm8DiATB71cEUqyK_ajxL_twqUVM/view?usp=sharing