Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Today’s text

John 3:15-18

For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God's only Son.

Reflection

God did not begin loving the world the day Jesus was born as the bearer of the divine heart. God loved the world--and me and you--from everlasting, from before the explosion of wonder that created the dazzling universe we know through our microscopes and telescopes.

Before that, before the yawning eons of time, before the first appearance of tender green life on this lovely planet, before it all there was the love whom God is. And that is all there was. Just Love. All that is born into being is the offspring, the child of Eternal Love.

The face of Eternal Love appears in the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who does not judge but welcomes all that is--and me--to return home, to dwell in the Love that gave it birth so that life may be complete and the Creator’s joy might be full.

Truth is we have never been separate from this Love. The reality of our life is sustained by Love every moment.

But only those with eyes to see know and understand that we dwell each day in a sea of love, surrounding us and holding all that is in being. They taste salvation, the freedom to live and love, knowing Immeasurable Love holds them in every instant.

The Son of God is given to this world to reveal the Love that always was, the Love we fail to trust and believe on many days, condemning ourselves to live the lie that we are something less than loved, that struggle, judgment and failure is the truth of our identity.

It’s a lie. Our lives were born in the mystery of the Love who is God. Our being is an expression of that One Love.

The Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, appears to call us back to ourselves, to our true identity, to feel once more (or for the first time) that the love I taste in my soul is the love that fills him, the love that is from everlasting to everlasting.

Every time we taste it within, every time we feel such love surrounding us we know the eternal life that is our destiny. Such is the sweetness of salvation.

Pr. David L. Miller