Zechariah 8 – Love Truth and Peace

A meditation to Zechariah 7:9 – 8:17.

YAHWEH’S affinity for truth and peace is seen numerous times in Zechariah 7 and 8. If favour is to be experienced extant of life we will enjoin ourselves to God’s will.

There is one way to experience God’s generous compassion — do his will: love truth and peace. And in this chapter of Zechariah there is a movement from judgment to compassion. God is compassionate in his covenant faithfulness, but there is the obligation now for God’s forgiven people to be God’s people: to love truth and peace.

As a people under the New Covenant ushered in under Jesus we make not much ado about grace. Many Christians take grace for granted. We all do from time to time.

If only we could hear the Words of the Lord in Zechariah 8, from the Lord himself, and take them deep inside us, embody them, and allow them to transform us. We would sense that God has the power to judge us severely and bring about disaster. We would feel the weight of God’s glory; the immensity of a life lived before God’s very Presence. We would see nothing as insignificant in life. We might begin to understand the depth of God’s immeasurable grace.

Ours would be a response…

The response of truth: to make the ability of our response — to be responsible for — living a life devoted to the truth. Such a life is devoted to losing in order to gain. To be so devoted to truth means there are times when life will definitely not work out as we would like it. So be it. And to God be that glory. That is to love the truth; to do it all ways.

The response of peace: to make the ability of our response — to be responsible for — living life as a peacemaker, under all circumstances. Again, such a life is devoted to the overall best even if that means a personal worst. This is about giving up what we cannot keep in order to retain what we could not lose; fellowship with friend and foe, alike.

Even when things don’t go our way we have the responsibility to love truth and peace. Indeed, when things don’t go our way, more is the privilege in this upside down gospel life.

Love truth and peace and peace will abide within you and truth will honour you.

Love truth and peace and God will honour you with strength and prosperity.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.