"Opposites" Prayer, Scripture, and a Reading

Today's episode is about "opposites".

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Let's pray. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace, that where there is hatred I may bring love, that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, that where there is discord, I may bring harmony, that where there is error, I may bring truth, that where there is doubt I may bring faith, that where there is despair I may bring hope, that where there are shadows I may bring light, that where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved. For it is by self forgetting that one finds, it is by forgiving that one is forgiven, it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen. That's the prayer of Saint Francis and today's theme is opposites. There are a lot of opposites there. I have a verse for you that has an opposite in it Psalm twenty three. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul. He leads me down paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The opposite being even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. And I have a reading for you today by A. W. Pink. Um in the this is from a short writing titled The Sovereignty of God and Creation. This is something you can find at chapel library.org, and you can read the whole thing. AW Pink says, In the great expanse of eternity which stretches behind Genesis 1 1, the universe was unborn and creation existed only in the mind of the great creator. In his sovereign majesty God dwelt all alone. We refer to that far distant period before the heavens and the earth were created, where there were then no angels to him God's praises, no creatures to occupy his notice, no rebels to be brought into subjection. The great God was all alone amid the awful silence of his own vast universe. But even at that time, if time it could be called, God was sovereign. He might create or not create, according to his own good pleasure. He might create this way or that way, he might create one world or one million worlds, and who was there to resist his will? He might call into existence a million different creatures and place them on absolute equality, endowing them with the same faculties and placing in them the same environment, or he might create a million creatures each differing from the others, and possessing nothing in common save their creaturehood. And who was there to challenge his right? If he so pleased, he might call into existence a world so immense that its dimensions were utterly beyond finite computation, and were he so disposed he might create an organism so small that nothing but the most powerful microscope could reveal its existence to human eyes. It was a sovereign right to create, on the one hand, the exalted seraphim to burn around his throne, and on the other hand, the tiny insect which dies the same hour that it is born. If the mighty god chose to have one vast gradation in his universe, from loftiest seraph to creeping reptile, from revolving worlds to floating atoms, from macrocosm to microcosm, instead of making everything uniform, who was there to question his sovereign pleasure? I'm going to try to upload every week. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time. God bless.