God is love. Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. Jesus asked, "Do you love me?" The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Love is patient; love is kind.
Sometimes I think that if we took all the love stuff out of the Bible it would be shocking how much smaller it would be!
But this is the thing, since God is love, there would quite literally be no Good News without love. Oh, there could be a book of rules and directives and society-protecting ideas about what the consequences of certain behaviors should be. But it could never be anything about the teachings of Jesus.
God loves us. God invites us to love back. God's love is perfect and ours can not be. But it the best of goals, hopes and consideration. that we can aim for.
Too much of that which is call "religion" devolves into the "how many angels can stand on the head of a pin" kinds of arguments. But St. Paul reminds us that for love as well as for joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control there is no law against these kinds of things.* Really, as much as people argue about matters of religious teachings, who is against these things. Oh, they may argue that in the face of the world's evils that it is hard to DO or foolish to trust God enough to do these things, but, really, who could actually argue that any of these things are BAD?
So, let us make those choices that reflect God's love, that move us closer to these choices that help us grow in trust and faith as we make the better choice and watch what happens. Does this guarantee that we will never get punched in the eye when we return kindness for anger? Of course not, but I think you will be surprised at how often it just confuses the heck out of people and how often you will avoid saying or doing something based on incomplete understanding of a situation.
And everyday we will know more deeply that God is love and all these things that proceed from that love bears us up in the most difficulty of times.
*Galatians 5:22-23
Sometimes I think that if we took all the love stuff out of the Bible it would be shocking how much smaller it would be!
But this is the thing, since God is love, there would quite literally be no Good News without love. Oh, there could be a book of rules and directives and society-protecting ideas about what the consequences of certain behaviors should be. But it could never be anything about the teachings of Jesus.
God loves us. God invites us to love back. God's love is perfect and ours can not be. But it the best of goals, hopes and consideration. that we can aim for.
Too much of that which is call "religion" devolves into the "how many angels can stand on the head of a pin" kinds of arguments. But St. Paul reminds us that for love as well as for joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control there is no law against these kinds of things.* Really, as much as people argue about matters of religious teachings, who is against these things. Oh, they may argue that in the face of the world's evils that it is hard to DO or foolish to trust God enough to do these things, but, really, who could actually argue that any of these things are BAD?
So, let us make those choices that reflect God's love, that move us closer to these choices that help us grow in trust and faith as we make the better choice and watch what happens. Does this guarantee that we will never get punched in the eye when we return kindness for anger? Of course not, but I think you will be surprised at how often it just confuses the heck out of people and how often you will avoid saying or doing something based on incomplete understanding of a situation.
And everyday we will know more deeply that God is love and all these things that proceed from that love bears us up in the most difficulty of times.
*Galatians 5:22-23
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