Wednesday 22 August 2018

Psalm: Psalm 119:161-176

Background

It would be easy to say at this point that all we have to do is love one another. The problem there is the very small word, “all”. When we begin to dig down into what Paul is saying to the Christians at Colossai we are presented with a very important question: What is the nature of this “love which binds everything together in perfect harmony”?

It is of course the love which comes from God, the mysteriously free and underserved love of God. God does not love when we have met the requirements, or when we have changed enough to be lovable, or when we are lucky enough to have been born one race or a particular gender. God just loves: “Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free” (v. 11); God loves them all and everyone else besides.

Trying to measure God’s love is like trying to control the wind. God will do anything for this world because God loves the world – that’s why he sent his Son to live and die for the world. To realise this eternal truth is to be, in Jesus’ words, born again, or “born from above” (John 3:1-16), to start again learning to walk and speak and think and grow in a world where the God of love is the breath we breathe, so that our every response to the world around us is informed by that love.

To be “clothed” with the vitality of God’s love is to share in God’s wildly extravagant love for the world. Our love must be as limitless as God’s. There are no check lists for who is loved and who is not. We cannot set terms and conditions for loving. You only have to look at the people Jesus showed loving compassion to in the Gospels’ stories to see that God’s love is without limit.

These two verses are asking a great deal of the community of believers.

To Ponder

• Reflect for a few moments on the people your community find it hard to love and the people your community would like to exclude. Are they loved by God? How can your community show God’s love to them?
• What is your community thankful for?