#God Delights In You

[tom4jc]

April 29, 2024 Verse Of The Day

[momentsbeforemass]

The why of Christmas

Thinking up the worst possible outcome.

Maybe even two or three or more ways that it can go wrong. And then getting stuck thinking about them.

It’s one of my least useful skills.

Especially when it comes to imagining how someone is going to respond to something hard. Or how a difficult situation is going to work out.

If you’re like me, then you know how this “skill” can really run you through the wringer. Long before anything has actually happened. Much less anything bad.

One of the worst ways that this plays out? With other people. Especially people we don’t really know. When we have to rely on what someone has told us about them.

Probably the most obvious (and most damaging) example of this is with God.

Here’s why I say that. We live in a culture that’s created a lot of versions of God that are horrible.

And it’s not just people who supposedly hate God. Some of the people who proclaim their faith the loudest proudly show off their petty, vengeful, resentful, hateful versions of God.

So it’s really no surprise that even people who don’t horrible-ize things imagine the worst possible outcomes from any interaction with God. They’ve been given every reason to get stuck thinking about God that way. They’ve been given every reason to stay away.

Except the truth.

Today’s Gospel (Matthew 1:1-25) gives the names of the Son of God – Jesus and Emmanuel.

Jesus means “God saves.” It tells us what God will do through Jesus, and how God works.

Emmanuel means “God with us.” It tells us who Jesus is, and what’s in God’s heart.

That’s the truth about God. How do we know that’s really the truth about God?

Because that’s what plays out in the Incarnation. In the pattern of redemption that runs from Christmas through Good Friday to Easter.

God saves. And He does it by being who He is, by being God with us.

The thing to know is how God does it.

God doesn’t save us begrudgingly. God isn’t the God of “if-I-have-to.”

God doesn’t save us judgmentally (although some of God’s noisiest alleged followers want Him to be). God isn’t the God of condemnation.

So how does God do it?

Isaiah tells us in the first reading (Isaiah 62:1-5), and it has zero to do with anything about what you and I have done. Or how far we’ve wandered. Or how much we don’t fit in someone else’s messed up version God.

Here’s the truth. And it’s the why of Christmas, the source of the joy of Christmas.

God looks at you and loves you.

God looks at you and gets excited about being with you.

God delights in you.

This Christmas, may God fill your heart with the joy that comes from knowing just how much you mean to Him.

Readings for Christmas Eve

[nightmare-chaser]

Ive seen multiple posts from reddit refuges that go like "im queer and its so welcoming here!" Or "im nonbinary and dont get quized on my gender here!" Or "im autistic and i can be weird here and yall like it!" And its so fuckin cute its like yes hi hello welcome this is the gay ass autistic website we love special interests we love weird genders we love just saying random shit and the just happy surprised tone of those posts is so wholesome to me like yes! hi! you are in fact the target audience! welcome home

[randamhajile]

HAHA MY COMPANY WAS TOO CHEAP TO BUY CROWDSTRIKE FALCON AND NOW I GET TO ENJOY MY WEEKEND PEACEFULLY : )

[lilybug-02]

New friend acquired!

Bug Fact: Colombian Lesserblack Tarantulas have pet frogs! The frog protects the spider's eggs from ants and in return, the frog is kept safe by the spider.

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Masterpost

[egophiliac]

this is basically what happened, right?

(these guys are very lucky that everyone at NRC 1) has the combined intelligence of a sack of bricks, and 2) is easily distracted by shiny things.)

[canisalbus]

Happy birthday!

.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[saltpepperbeard]

Stede's Slutty Stiddy Shirt™ for @gentlebeard

[ckret2]

(I said earlier I had a fic excerpt about DEATH LAWYER AXOLOTL, here it is.)

The god hopefully turned to the time giant—

She shook her head, expression flat. "Nope. I'm a civil engineer, not a hostage negotiator."

—and then turned to the Axolotl. "You. You know how to talk to mortals like this triangle that's taken over Dimension Zero, don't you? Isn't he like the omnicidal monsters you represent every day?"

The Axolotl looked nervously at the wormhole into Dimension Zero. He could see blue fire and hear wails of pain on the other side. "Ah," he said.

####

Biologically there was really no such thing as a god, in the same way that botanically there is really no such thing as a vegetable. Tomatoes are fruits; spinach is a leaf; carrots are roots; broccoli is an unfinished flower. The word "vegetable" just indicates the cultural role a plant performs in the kitchen.

The word "god" indicated the cultural role an entity performed in cosmology: a god was anything that exerted enough power that mortals felt driven to worship it.

Different beings so honored with the title "god" handled it in different ways. For the Axolotl's part, he thought it was a useful designation to help with networking, but mostly it was a pain that meant he was put up on a pedestal for doing his job.

The Axolotl was a god of justice. Not the god of justice, but one. He held dominion over an abstract concept; over millions and billions of years, his words and decisions slowly, inexorably altered the idea of "justice" on a multiversal scale. Mercy, retribution, punishment, rehabilitation, equity, equality, fairness, and righteousness were like multicolored clays he could twist, squish, sculpt, and blend at his leisure, permanently altering what those ideas meant to the mortals they affected.

Which was to say: he was a lawyer.

He was also known as a god of rebirth. Which was to say: he specialized in afterlife law. Before going into law he'd only been a psychopomp, but after having to escort too many despairing souls to afterlives he felt were too severe for their sins, he'd decided he wanted a say in where he took his souls. Now he helped clients get their charges reduced so they were eligible for a higher-tier reincarnation, or got their purgatorial sentences reduced, or—on rare occasions—even helped them avoid damnation. (Although he didn't take many damnation cases. He didn't always win—and those ones were too depressing to lose.)

And lately, he'd been developing a reputation.

For the past few centuries, he'd been working on a damnation case. He was defending a supervillain who'd built a weapon that could slice open the fabric of spacetime—a crime against reality—and bisect planets in its wake. He'd died inside the jurisdiction of an afterlife that had legalized eternal damnation. Case law had long since established that the dead had to be sent either to the afterlife system of their native jurisdiction or an alternate afterlife system of their choice in order to be judged, provided that the proper afterlife accepted their transfer request.

But if this villain had been extradited to his home world, the heaviest sentence he could have faced was a thousand years purgatory, with an option for early reincarnation for good behavior after a hundred years. So the jurisdiction he'd died in had summoned up some bureaucratic red tape to dismiss his native afterlife's extradition request, and he'd been sentenced where he'd died. They'd wanted to establish via case law that the dead who had committed crimes against reality could be damned in whichever jurisdiction they happened to die in, and hoped they could get away with it just for lack of anyone protesting the move. After all, everyone involved much preferred that a mortal wicked enough to obliterate multiple populated planets and trillions of lives receive eternal punishment.

Everyone involved except the Axolotl. 

Taking this case hadn't made him many friends. He didn't care; he had his principles. Let an interplanetary supervillain be dragged away to a foreign afterlife just so that he can be forced into damnation, and next it'll be a planetary dictator; let a dictator be dragged away, and next it'll be a murderer; and next it'll be a burglar; and next it'll be a jaywalker that a psychopomp has a personal grudge against. If the Axolotl could establish that even the most undeserving mortal imaginable, a criminal against reality, still deserved the right to be sentenced in the afterlife of his choice, then he could establish that everyone less evil deserved the same right.

If he had anything to say about it, in two or three trillion years he'd see eternal punishment outlawed completely; but untilthen, he was not going to sit idly by and let this flagrant abuse of interdimensional law become the new meaning of justice! He would get that supervillain out of eternal damnation, personally escort him to his native afterlife, and see him reincarnated on his own home world—and mark his words, he would rain so much bureaucratic hell on the judges and psychopomps that had let this abuse of justice take place that no god would dare keep a soul from its rightful afterlife ever again, or he wasn't the Axolotl!

All of which was to say:

Yes, unfortunately. This triangle was like the omnicidal monsters he represented every day.

And so he was appointed hostage negotiator.

####

(And that's why a trillion years later he's the guy helping Bill submit an insanity plea so that he can go to Theraprism rather than get the permadeath penalty.)

[subzeroparade]

every evening, the Choir gives each pearl slug and augur a little kiss goodnight ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆✧˖°.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 84

Amity Park absolutely adores her little ghostling, her little Gatekeeper who was of her own ectoplasm, reborn from her own blood in the center of her new heart. She absolutely adores her baby, practically a newborn, being only a year dead! 

So of course she had to gush and boast about her little phantom to the other city spirits! They all got together to gossip sometimes after all. And both Smallville and Fawcett started to gush about their own little ones back! 

Gosh they should set up a playdate at some point, her little phantom could use some friends in the mortal realm. Well some more friends, three is obviously not enough. Oh, Gotham and Bludhaven have come over as well! It’s a playdate then! 

Now if only each of their world’s timelines were synced up, but at least everyone is around the same age! 

[unopenablebox]

finished my shawl!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

it doesnt need to be said but its genuinely so funny how at-the-hip charles and erik are in krakoa like they really had the green light- the OBLIGATION- to be as obnoxiously close to each other as possible and abused that right to the fullest extent

[egophiliac]

What do you think of Rook's savanaclaw card? <333

I didn't get him (and I need to save my keys for Silver's birthday, sob) so I looked up his groovy, and I'm not over how incredibly dramatic and epic and cool it looks in direct contrast to the absolutely ridiculous context. just look at that dynamic action and his majestic sparkling tears and keep in mind that this is pretty much right after a bunch of characters have been dance battling for his soul.

and then even the actual moment of the groovy is just like

this is NOT a negative in the slightest, I love it all, this truly was an incredible update in so many ways

[thenobleprincex]

just want to take a moment to appreciate all the fabulous, brilliant, mind-blowing artists and writers in the good omens fandom. I'm constantly blown away by what you do and so thankful that you chose to share it with us 💛