Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I just wanted to pen a quick note and tell you just how thankful I am for all of you who come here everyday to read and discuss the news. While we try to find the best news articles we can to bring you what we feel is important, you are truly what makes The Right Scoop special. It’d be a boring news website without you – that’s for sure.
I’m also thankful, as some of you know, for being brought into the Catholic church this year. It’s completely changed my life, and my relationship with God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is deeper now than it has ever been. I am learning so much about the scriptures and, in turn, learning so much about the Most Merciful who loves us more profoundly that we will ever know in this flesh. Here’s a good example of how my perspective on God’s love for us has changed this year:
When God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, it wasn’t just punishment – it was an act of MERCY.
As the scripture tells us, once Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God refused to allow them to remain in the garden to prevent them from eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. If He had allowed them to eat of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever in their fallen state. God didn’t want that.
Rather, God made a plan for us: He would plant a NEW Tree of Life. Except this new Tree of Life would not only offer us eternal life, as did the tree in the Garden of Eden, but it would offer us full redemption from our fallen state so that we could once again join with Him in full communion, just as we were in the garden.
This new Tree of Life, of course, is the Cross and the fruit of this tree – that we are now free to eat of – is Christ.
This is why Jesus said at the Last Supper “Take and eat; this is my body which is given for you.”
The message of the scriptures is so simple. God did all of this – He gave EVERYTHING to make a way for us to come back into the garden so that He could be with us forever. It’s not about us loving Him. No, it’s about Him, the Most Merciful, loving us so much that He refused to allow our distrust of His love to ruin us forever. God could have easily dispatched humanity and all that he had created in a single moment after we had sinned. But we are the work of His own hands. We are His creation and are filled with His very breath. God loves us with a love so profoundly deeper than we could ever possibly imagine, and this is why God’s love for us is the greatest love story that could ever be told.
As Paul reminds us in Romans: “While we were yet helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man — though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”
While we were the ones who distrusted Him, the ones who betrayed Him – even after our marriage covenant with Him on Mount Sinai – the ones who worshiped other Gods and gave them credit for rescuing us from Egypt – the ones who despised God so much that He didn’t even want to accompany us to the Promise Land for fear that He would have to wholly destroy us along the way because of our stiff necks – DESPITE all of this, He still gave everything of Himself just to redeem us from our utterly corrupt state, suffering actual pain and rejection – even death on a cross – just to be with us.
Think about it. He still wears our human flesh with the scars of His sacrifice in Heaven. Sometimes I think we don’t have a clue just how much He really loves us.
And I am still learning this every day. As the great song writer Rich Mullins put it, “I believe what I believe, is what makes me what I am. I did not make it, no it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.”
I could share more with you, but I have a Thanksgiving meal to prepare before my family gets here. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and may God bless each and every one of you today with His unimaginable love.