After a frustrating loss of a devotion over a faulty router at a coffee shop - we continue. God's love as beginning and end and now - is also the makings of the life that happens along the way. Once again each day of the week will be added to the next.
Monday
Sunday's text for the sermon was the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den - at least that is how the story is named. Unfortunately, if we only look at that amazing bit of rescue and faithfulness, I would suggest we miss much of the story. The beauty of the Daniel story is that it begins somewhere else in time. Yes, that time is always within the domain of the love of God, but let's go back to time as ordinary time - everyday time - the time we often wish would move more quickly and sometimes more slowly. There along the way within the times of life - Daniel's life in this case - stories were told. Imagine Daniel not as the man in the cave but the boy - the child - the teen - the young adult - hearing about this God as love. The stories would not be mere 'lessons' about what love means, they would be stories of God's faithfulness that could be seen within the way God's love inspired 'regular' folks to walk in the way of extraordinary love. The stories that we share in order to bring this love to life among us are stories in which we can see love changing life into something more like the living presence of God. I love those stories - I need those stories - I want to follow along the way of those stories. This is me speaking - not Daniel. In my faithful imagination though, Daniel was moved in a similar fashion. That is why he went up to pray three times a day. That is one way faithful people remember the unfolding reality of God's love. From there - from our active remembering - we are invited to face whatever beasts may come upon us along the way.
Tuesday
It does not take much to remember the gift of life that is ours. It is life shaped by the love of God. That is how I would call it. By saying that, I tell myself that is what I inherit - that love. That is the substance of the life I take on as I walk through this day. When, in my faithful imagination, I envision a loving God pausing to take a moment to set humanity into the spin of the cosmos - and it is simply because of God's love that it all takes place - that is a power-filled moment. God as love is not for other things - it is the power that creates me too! Now within the whirlwind of God's creativity we each become an instrument of an ongoing creativity that expands the notion of this creative love. Here among us - you and me and those we call enemies - is how love becomes known as distinctive and real and relational. That is how God's love is meant to be. It is not a distant concept. It is a power that holds on - carries - walks alongside - dies with the rest of us - and then, somehow opens up life when there is no possibility of life at all. We are a part of that possibility.
Wednesday
God as love is the power that makes change take place. This kind of change would be the change that is traditionally called repentance. It is repentance because it is a turning toward the Reign of God's love. That is not our usual and normal activity. We are most often people who turn from God's love and toward a self-love that wears many masks so that it is not so obvious that we are consumed by love of self. I'm not saying it is not good to love one's self. Rather, I am referring to Luther's notion of a turned-in-on-self. This is a turning away from God and going to do it my way - a way that is all about me and my own. It is the way that creates division and jealousy and all the stuff that seems to be able to push out the love of God so that we are left with nothing but our own ways and wants. This can be and is quite ugly - just look at the world as it is - just look at our own actions and thoughts. God as love is the power that wrestles with us and tickles us to re-view who we are and what we are doing and to see it all alongside the story of God's faithful loving. It is there that we daily are being nudged to turn around and take a new path.
If the love of the God is something that is beyond us, what are we invited to share. Well, it is the love of God. The love of God as it is able to be expressed in and through our ordinary lives. And yet, can God's love be expressed through such simple, ordinary vessels? Can this love that is always beyond us become a part of us - or will it always be less than God's love? Isn't that why we turn to the Jesus story. The story in which the love of God becomes incarnate - human - everyday - everybody. That story makes us look at the powerful light of God's love in a way that translate the words and promises into concrete action - abiding with the outcasts - forgiving beyond the limits of common sense - being a servant of all. The list goes on and on and needs only translation into our own context. God's love is beyond us and yet it is always setting us up so that we will enter it and display it as fully as humanity is able. That is not always a perfect pitch. And yet, God as love continues to reach out and offer us a way into the future.
O God of love and new life, keep your love shaping all that we are to be. Amen.
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