Flinging Ourselves Into The Arms of Love

This week's scriptures are John 3:1-17 and Mark 2:23-3:6.

My wife forwarded me a set of email pictures today. They were all beautiful; but there was one that reached out and grabbed me by the heart. It's in an airport. The mother in the picture is in her military fatigues and backpack. She has scooted to her knees and has her arms around a little girl who is about three. The little girl has her arms around her mother's neck and her head buried in her shoulder. The mother has the tearful look of one who is back, holding the dream that kept her going while she was away.

Take that picture. Hold it in the eye of your heart and mind.

THAT'S HOW GOD FEELS ABOUT YOU

Let me say it again...

THAT'S HOW GOD FEELS ABOUT YOU. WRAPPING YOU AND I AND ALL OF US IN THE ARMS OF GOD'S LOVE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT GOAL GOD HAS FOR HUMANITY.

I have to confess that sometimes I lose track of this. In the midst of everything else, I can forget what is foundational. That it isn't right thought; or right action; or right worship; or right ANYTHING. Those are things I control...and this isn't about me.

Everytime I make it about me, I fall short and am afraid. Cause if it's about me, there is no hope. I'll never be good enough. I'll never understand enough. Jesus makes the point, though, in both Mark and the John passages that God is less concerned with 'rules' (pick your set, they're not that important) than with relationship. And that we can't do it for ourselves.

John 3:3 has an interesting word that can be translated "born again" or "born from above." Nicodemus makes the same mistake you and I do. He hears it as "born again" and wonders how we can manage it. When we hear it "born from above" we get the truth that being "born from above" is something that is done FOR us. It is a gift.

As I think about all this today, there are three phrases that keep running through my head (all from different places):

The first is my favorite paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 5:19, "God was in Christ hugging the world back to Himself."

The second is the one sentence summation of the 12 Steps of AA "I can't, God can, I'll let'em"

And the third is the answer theologian Karl Barth gave when asked the most important theological truth he had learned in his years of study. He replied, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

It is a simple and as profound as an embrace. God loves you. And that (not the hokey pokey) is what it's all about.

See you Sunday.
Shalom,
Stephen