Thursday, February 14, 2008

Today's text

John 3:13-17

No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man; as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. 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.

Prayer

I want to be John’s editor, Dear Friend. He needs to adjust his tense.

‘This is how God loved’? Really, John, you miss your opportunity to transform our vision. You pull your punch, failing to say without qualification what is clearly your intent.

Just come out and say it: Not this is how God loved, but this is how God loves, eternally and without surcease. The loving is not once and done, but from first dawn of morning to our final gasping breath, and eternally beyond.

Beyond time. Beyond space. Beyond being and nonbeing. Beyond the immensity of this universe. Beyond the yawning dark stretch of freezing space. Beyond human misery, cruelty and apathy.

Beyond all that we are, all that has happened to us or ever will. Beyond it all: You love and keep on loving.

And not this or that: but this world, the messy, dirty, disordered one that plops in my driveway each morning when the paper boy makes his round.

You love this world and gave not this or that, but the life you are. All for our taking.

And it goes on forever, the life and the love.

Together, may we know them today.

Pr. David L. Miller