Grace Remembered and Relived; Entry 15 (see first Entry here.)
2 October 2000:
Psalm 89:1-2:
1 Your love, O Lord, for ever will I sing; * from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.
2 For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever; * you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.
Psalm 89:14b:
". . . love and truth go before your face."
Acts 20:17-38:
Paul to elders of Ephesus at Miletus:
"Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son."
Hendiadys is a composite of three Greek words. Hen means one; dia means through and dys means two. Hendiadys describes a poetic convention used in many if not most of our Psalms, in which the Psalmist says one (hen) thing in (dia) two (dys) ways.
The Psalmist want us to know that God's love and God's faithfulness are like two sides of a single coin. We can be sure of God's faithfulness because God's love for us endured even the cross and the tomb, and we can be sure of God's love because even "if we are faithless, he remains faithful-- for he cannot deny himself" [2 Timothy 2:13].
Paul wants us who have been called into ministry, whether ordained or lay, to "keep watch over ourselves" as well as "over all the flock." Today we call that "self-care." To care well for others we must take care of ourselves, too, for we cannot give what we do not have. Keeping this journal was an essential part of my self-care during the time of conflict. Another essential part was keeping faithful to the Holy Spirit's call "to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son," even in the midst of conflict.
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