Thursday: Uranium Once on the Scrap Heap
WEEK 40
THURSDAY
URANIUM ONCE ON THE SCRAP HEAP
Ephesians 4:17-24
We now turn to note the results of this caring. The caring was curing. For whenever one goes astray, it is usually because that person thinks nobody cares. Those who deal with alcoholics say there is seldom—or never—a cure unless the alcoholic feels that somebody cares. This new faith of Jesus put cosmic caring at the heart of the universe. God cares. The universe is friendly; it cares. And deeper, it is redemptive. That threw a friendly framework around every single human problem. The universe is not vast indifference; it cares. That tipped the scales in the direction of hope, hope for everybody. A great many things that are very useful to us were once thrown away as waste material. More and more will people discover that what we now consider waste will be put to useful and glorious purposes. We see the same thing arising in the Acts of the Apostles. A temple of God was arising, the most beautiful society our planet has seen; and that temple was being reared out of waste material, human lives that were on the scrap heap of society. People who were on the scrap heap—either through their own sins and follies or through the sins of society—as slaves were now being rescued, reshaped, and growing into a temple for the habitation of God in the Spirit.
I’ve been told that uranium was once thrown out on the scrap heap as worthless. The substance that is at the basis of atomic energy once considered of no use! And now that very castoff substance is to be at the basis of the energy that will transform the world. That is what was happening in the Christian movement. People who were the nobodies were now the centers of the energy that was transforming the world. It was the miracle of the nothing becoming everything, of the powerless becoming power. In this new kingdom, the little child played with infinite forces; of such belonged the kingdom of God. The meek, the submissive, those who knew how to accept, were inheriting the earth; it was theirs. And how!
O Lord, I thank you that you are taking the things that are not and bringing to naught the things that are. You are revealing these things to babes. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be careful today, for everyone I meet has valuable potentialities.