Who will be saved?

[Today I wanted to share the devotion I woke up to that often guides my Bible study for the day. It's from the devotional Christ in our Home and it's published by Augsburg Fortress out of Minneapolis, and this particular one spoke to me.

Written by Rick Reiten, a Lutheran pastor from Wisconsin, today's message -- I especially love the first sentence! -- had as its Scripture Acts 2:42-47 just after the church had its first major growth spurt in Jerusalem on Pentecost. The focal verse was forty-seven: "Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved."

While I don't necessarily agree with all of Pastor Rick's exposition here (it's "progressive-thinking" here that seems synonymous with throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and the only judgments I feel qualified to make re: heaven and hell is that there is a heaven and I want to go there and there is a hell and I DON'T want to go there)

I was touched to share it because I read something yesterday I did not believe strongly. ALL of God's creation can be restored to fellowship with him; it's a choice that you and I make. No one is created -- or at least I can't find Scriptural justification for it -- to be an example of what not to do! When I was a kid I thought like that, I literally was afraid that when I was baptized by immersion (grew up in a Southern Baptist church where they do that) I would burn up in the water like the demon I was!

Let's see, that was June 1985 and I'm not sending this from the past ... so I must not be the demon I thought I was. But I will let God figure out and direct me to who I really am, David]

There are two things I believe strongly: there is a God, and I am not God. Therefore, I try my best to let God do what God does. This is especially true when it comes to deciding who will be saved. This topic often seems to be in the news, written about in books, or studied in church. Maybe I am taking a passive position, but I would rather let God be the one to figure it out.

Julian of Norwich, whom the church commemorates today, was a progressive-thinking mystic theologian who lived in the 14th century. She may have never used the term "universal salvation," but she leaned in that direction, hoping that all of humankind would be saved by God.

In our limited understanding, we don't need to make judgments about heaven and hell, because we don't know how God will continue to act. Remember that day by day God is adding people to the team. What we can do is take the lead of one of God's saints, Julian, and pray and hope that through the grace of God, everyone will be saved.