Uttermost Parts March 4, 2016

² and return to the Lord your God, . . .⁴ If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. Deuteronomy 30:2-4 ESV

In my work with the homeless I have witnessed and heard stories of people who have made life choices that include drug use and criminal activity.  Some of these are told in past tense, others- present tense.  Stories of both being abused and being the abuser.  Tales of abandonment and mental illness abound.  As I read today's verse and ponder the lives of these children of God, I wonder if any of them fail to accept God's grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation because they feel a loving, pure, holy God could never open His arms to them and adopt them into sonship.

Society considers these homeless as outcasts, but in today's verse, God specifically addresses the disenfranchised, the cast offs, the expendables.  It doesn't matter how far from God you feel  you have moved.  No distance is too far, even the "uttermost parts of heaven".  We have but only return to God.  Not go to church.  Not quit using drugs.  Not stop all sin.  Just return.  Walk to Him.  Reach out a hurting, desperate hand to Him.  Step one- "re" turn.  Turn back to Him.

Our sin has made us all outcasts.  Each of us is separated from God because of our disobedience.  While the effects of sin may be more apparent in some lives, even the CEO on the 61st floor is isolate from God because of choices made.  Careful that we do not see ourselves with just as great a need as the person sleeping in the doorway.

It doesn't matter where you are.  Deep in drug use.  Buried in an adulterous affair.  Drowning in pornography.  Engulfed in bitterness.  He will gather you from the "uttermost parts of heaven."  From the most distant place, He will find you.  Your in cannot exceed His reach.  Your disobedience cannot surpass His grasp.

Satan, the great deceiver, would love to convince you the distance it too great, the chasm too wide; God would never traverse the chasm created by our sin.  God tells a different story. There is no place too remote for His grace.  The question is, "Who will you believe:  The Father of Lies, or El Emet, the God of Truth?"