{"id":1591,"date":"2012-04-26T08:52:51","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T12:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2012-04-26T08:56:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T12:56:02","slug":"psalm-77-dare-to-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=1591","title":{"rendered":"(Psalm 77) Dare to hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Will the Lord cast off forever? And will He be favorable no more?\u00a0Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forevermore?\u00a0Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Although these questions are not directly answered in this psalm, the strong implication here is that the answer to all of them is no, a resounding NO.\u00a0 No, it cannot be!\u00a0 It goes against the\u00a0very character of God revealed in the Old Testament, and in the person and work of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n<p>Has His mercy ceased forever? No, His mercies <em>endure<\/em> forever.\u00a0 We cannot say less than the Scriptures teach us.\u00a0 But we dare not say more.\u00a0 God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.<\/p>\n<p>As Kallistos Ware, a bishop in the Greek Orthodox Church, has written:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our belief in human freedom means that we have no right to categorically affirm, &#8220;All <em>must<\/em> be saved.&#8221; But our faith in God&#8217;s love [and mercy]\u00a0makes us dare to <em>hope<\/em> that all will be saved.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We have to leave it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will the Lord cast off forever? And will He be favorable no more?\u00a0Has His mercy ceased forever? Has His promise failed forevermore?\u00a0Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Although these questions are not directly answered in this psalm, the strong implication here is that the answer to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=1591\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;(Psalm 77) Dare to hope&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1596,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions\/1596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}