Thought for the week - 9 June 2008

Living God's Love

Have you ever wished God would sometimes just make a big entrance, “a big bang” and do something unequivocally holy and tremendous so that the world would have to catch it’s breath and say “ok, I give up, you are real and I can see that now”.

Sometimes, when I see injustice, apathy toward suffering, violent crime, the vulnerable being mercilessly cheated and abused, and some politicians, business and religious leaders massaging their egos at the expense of people they’re supposed to be serving, I cry out with Judas (not Iscariot) and say “how is it that you show yourself to us, and not to these others?” (John 14:22)

And then I remember Jesus’s answer to Judas, which was,

“If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching.

My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him”.”  John 14:23

“If anyone loves me…”

Jesus explains to Judas, and to us, how God works in the world; which is in and through love. And more than that, it’s in and through people who love God. “When you love me”, says Jesus, “God will live in you, and when that happens you will keep my commandments, and when that happens the world will see me, in and through you”.

But that’s a big responsibility isn’t it? 

God continues to speak and act in the world through those who love him and who take his commandments seriously enough to change their own lives in response to him; for unless our own lives are changed into offerings of love for the sake of God’s creation, then we can’t expect the world to take any notice of the Gospel at all.

Revd Ian Spencer