Tag Archives: Living God’s Love

The Way of Love

Advent

December 8, 2021

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 12:2-6

Surely God is my salvation;
   I will trust, and will not be afraid,
for the Lord God is my strength and my might;
   he has become my salvation.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say on that day:
Give thanks to the Lord,
   call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations;
   proclaim that his name is exalted.

Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously;
   let this be known in all the earth.
Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion,
   for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

The song Where is Love from the movie Oliver played in my head has I read this Scripture. The singer is a little boy who runs away from an orphanage in search of something better, in search of his mother. All alone and afraid in the darkness he sings:

Where is love?
Does it fall from skies above?
Is it underneath the willow tree
That I’ve been dreaming of?
Where is she
Who I close my eyes to see?
Will I ever know the sweet hello
That’s meant for only me*?

Surely my brain, or perhaps my heart, thought that Isaiah’s Scripture above answered Oliver’s questions. Recently, I have been thinking that we have pushed God to the back of the pantry as we sit alone in the dark, hopeless and helpless. We are neither. We serve a mighty God who loves us deeply and thoroughly and wants the very best for all God’s children.   Jesus, the Christ, came to show us the way, the truth, and the life*. Part of our problem is that we get distracted by life’s complications and have difficulty accepting that the solutions are straightforward as the love God expects of us. We are like toddlers fighting sleep when sleep is what they need.  We readily respond to challenges with strong emotions such as hate, anger, bigotry, and others when love is the required response. We cannot love like Jesus until we clear the clutter of what stands in our way of doing what is right, what is just.

Prayer: Lord, clear the clutter of selfishness and self-righteousness that limits our ability to love ourselves and others as you love. Amen.

*First verse of Where is Love by Lionel Bart see at https://genius.com/Oliver-musical-cast-recording-where-is-love-lyrics

**See John 14:6

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Loving Like Jesus

Living in the Spirit

September 11, 2021

Scripture Reading: Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. –Mark 8:27-30

The Title Messiah*, translated into Greek as Christ, describes the God-appointed King of the End of Time, also called the Anointed One.  All the Kings of Israel were anointed, and all were very human. Therefore, the Messiah would be the ideal King to rule at the End of Time. The phrase End of Time evokes ideas of perfection attained and continuing, or the opposite everything lost, and chaos returns.

God did not create the world to fail. God cared so much about the world and the people in it that God dwelt with us in the person of Jesus, who gave his life, gifting us with grace. God did not leave us without help. The Spirit of God was sent to be with us as we strive toward being the people God created us to be. God longs to keep company with us, but we must choose to keep company with God, who is Love. God will only live in community with us in mutual Love. Loving God and one another is what we are called to perfect. Revelation 21:3 expresses God great desire to dwell with us,

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;

When greed, lust for power, or any other sin overcomes our quest for God’s Love and loving like Jesus, we become a part of an evil empire. Such entities have attempted to rule throughout the history of God. If we continue in that quest, we will fail. Paul puts it this way, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Prayer: God, who is Love, today let us choose Love, and when we fail to love like Jesus, guide us to wholeness. Amen.

*The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, an Illustrated Encyclopedia, Abington Press 1981

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

The Light of Love

Lent

March 14, 2021

Scripture Reading: John 3:14-21

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ –John 3:17-21

“You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” –Anonymous

Part of Jesus’s assignment in his sojourn on earth was to experience what it was like being human. He was first introduced to the trials and tribulations of humanness when he was confronted with worldly temptations.  He wandered in the wilderness for 40 days following his baptism. Being fully human and fully divine was indeed a challenge. I remember years ago, a Star Trek show involving the character Q, who was cast as a relatively uninhibited all-powerful entity who was forced for a time to function in the world without his superpowers. He was accustomed to zapping anything that infringed on his desires, and for a time, he lost that power. He did not handle life situations well during that time, as I recall. 

Jesus came as God with us limited only by the power of love. Everything done in the name of God must be done in love. With a fuller understanding of what it meant to be human, Jesus realized that God’s people needed more light to open their eyes to the advantages of living in God’s love. His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection was the source of that light.

There are times in our lives now when Christ-followers are caught in the darkness as the world can overcome us, but we have the promise that Christ has overcome the world. We merely need to turn around and see that the light of God’s love in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus the Christ, can illuminate our path.

In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world! –John 16:33

Prayer: Lord, forgive us when we turn away from the light of your love. We thus get lost in the darkness of the world ourselves. Remind us that you sent us to be the light of the world. Empower us with your love so that we can spread your vision of a world ruled by love to the ends of the earth. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Being One

Kingdom Building

August 21, 2019

Scripture Reading: Psalm 71:1-6
In you, O Lord, I take refuge;
   let me never be put to shame.
In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
   incline your ear to me and save me.
Be to me a rock of refuge,
   a strong fortress, to save me,
   for you are my rock and my fortress.

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
   from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.
For you, O Lord, are my hope,
   my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from my birth;
   it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.

Does the spirit work through stomach acid? I do not know how many times recently; I have popped antacids in my mouth from feeling that burning sensation after hearing about something happening in our world that should not happen or nothing happening in our world that should should. Of course, these should and should nots are based in my opinion. I find it particularly sickening when either the should and should nots are done in the name of God when they are, in my opinion, as far from God as they could possibly be. How do we discern the will of God objectively separate and apart from our opinions? How do we do that as individuals and as communities of faith and in dialogue with the diverse world in which we live including various faiths and no religion at all?

The issue that gives me the most heartburn is the definition of being one in Christ, which is one of the most important tenets of my faith. I define being one in Christ as the diverse world finding common ground based in love that wants the very best for each person and all people. Common ground for the Common Good is essential for all to be fully the persons God created us to be and for the world to flourish as the amazing ecosystem in which we dwell together. Others seem to interpret being one as making everyone like them. And still others interpret being one as an exclusive group of persons chosen by God. If you make it into this group anything that you do is OK, and others may not matter.

As we struggle to find our identities in God’s service, we are allowing, even causing, the earth to die around us, children to die of hunger and disease or having their potential altered by too much lead in their water, and all kinds of violence from wars to mass shootings to domestic abuse.

I like the definition of shame as being guilt turned inward. Sorry, I do not know its source. The Psalmist above prays let me never be put to shame, which based on this definition of shame means that we are called by Christ to do everything in our power to accomplish the good and eliminate evil.

Prayer:
In you, O Lord, I take refuge;
   let me never be put to shame.
In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
   incline your ear to me and save me. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Setting New Norms

Ordinary Time
January 12, 2018

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body. –1  Corinthians 6:16-20

In my book, Houses Divided, I wrote that I thought it was time to revisit the norms of sexual behavior in our culture. Leviticus was written in a time when people viewed wombs as incubators in which the male deposited the seed for a new life. Children often did not live to adulthood and were an economic necessity to staff the work of an agrarian culture. Even in the last three hundred years, my ancestry lists families with twelve to eighteen children. Most families had two or more mothers, because many died in childbirth. My father’s family was a your’s, mine, and our’s family including eighteen children, one dying at birth when her mother was killed in an accident, one dying at age two, and one at nine both of communicable diseases. While such families exist today, they usually have fewer children and are most often the result of divorce. The advent of stable birth control in the mid-twentieth century changed the world as did the availability of immunizations, women becoming more economically self-sustaining, and divorce becoming less stigmatized. Some view these changes as bad and would like to overturn them while most of society accept them as reality.

How do people of faith define the Greek love called Eros (erotic love) and Philios (sibling love) today? How do they intersect with Agape (God’s) love? Paul gives us a great place to start in I Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

We need to be less concerned with how the world defines or advertises love and more concern about God’s love as it intersects with all our relationships.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for sending Jesus to model love for us. The world is too much with us in our relationships. Free us from its tangles and open our hearts and minds to learning to love in all aspects of love as Jesus loved. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.