To heal and mend the world..........

We are knee deep in politics here in America as a dozen men and women press their agendas as potential candidates for the office of President.

What we get to hear is each potential 'next president'  candidate's vision for America.  Their political agenda, and if they are doing it right, their 'call to arms' to the voting public to join them in making America great.

Jesus had an agenda too, and we get to hear it in the 4th chapter of Luke when he quotes from the prophet Isaiah 60.
   

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor,

 release to the captives, sight to the blind

 and freedom to the oppressed.  

To announce the year of the Lord's favor.'

Jesus is talking about turning this world upside down, inside out.....and in the end....upside right.  Jesus is setting out to heal and mend the world.

It's what we've all dreamed of......a world of mutuality, of peace, of fellowship.....a place where the world sings in 'perfect harmony.'  We have a dream; Jesus has a mission.

The healing of the nations is God's great design and desire for this creation.  So through the Son, God acts in this world....in our world....to heal and mend the nations.

And it will start with those who have found themselves at the bottom of the pile:  those imprisoned by ruling authority gone mad, those whose bodies have been broken from the very beginning and whose lives have always been a struggle, and those who are pressed down by the structures humans have created.  But it will not stop there.

Jesus will stand in the midst of all who are held captive by the demons of drugs or mental illness; all those whose spirits have been broken by the brokenness of another; all those who are blind to the truth and those unable to see any possibility beyond today.  Jesus will stand with those oppressed by poverty and those oppressed by others.  Jesus will stand with those who have been wrongly imprisoned and those who are defined by the crimes that put them in prison in the first place.

Jesus will also stand right next to the one who does the oppressing, is guilty of blinding a neighbor, has broken the spirit of another human being.

Jesus will stand right in the midst of the gang wars and abusive homes, the killing fields and depraved indifference.....so that God might be at work in him....healing and mending the world.  Both the do-ers and the receivers.  Nothing less will accomplish God's plan: the whole creation singing in perfect harmony.

For us it is no more than a dream.  For God, it is the future that comes to us in Jesus and at the same time is waiting for us.  Jesus is that tomorrow; Jesus leads us to that tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.