As I mentioned before, I have been loving the book of Zephaniah. So far, it has challenged my concept of a Sunday school story I grew up with, it has opened up my concept of discerning God’s will, and it is expanding my concept of God’s grace. I love this, because grace can be hard to see in the Old Testament sometimes; it is much easier to hang out in the New Testament where there are plenty of feel-good verses about being saved and way less prophets of doom spelling out God’s impending judgment. Isn’t it nice to live in an age where we’ve realized God isn’t so mean after all?
There is a downside to the perspective we have, however, this age where beautiful promises of Scripture can be plucked up and planted on sweet backgrounds with a cute font and posted on facebook for tough times.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Zephaniah 3:17. This is one of my friends’ favourite verses in the whole Bible, and it is a beautiful statement of God’s strength and love. In fact, the whole second half of Zephaniah 3 is a beautiful portrait of grace, forgiveness and redemption. God doesn’t say “at that time you will get your act together and I will love you again.” No, he promises to “change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech,” “remove the proudly exultant ones,” and “take away the judgments against you,” all actions of God to make his people holy. My problem with cutesy Bible verses out of context is that it takes God’s grace out of context and makes it cutesy too. Continue reading “Cute Grace”