The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The work of the Lord is done by ordinary people who work in an extraordinary way.
Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.
Christ is born into the world through each of us.
God is truly on the side of those who work for social justice, especially when we accompany that work with the giving of the Gospel!
The whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek.
If heaven is understood more as God's space on earth than as an ethereal region apart from the essential reality we know, then what happens on earth matters even more than we think, for the Christian life becomes a continuation of the unfolding work of Jesus, who will one day return to set the world to rights.
For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played.
Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly.
The ways of the Lord are different from the ways of man. Man's ways remove people from office or business when they grow old or become disabled. But man's ways are not and never will be the Lord's ways.
I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it.