Knitting a Conundrum

For a long time a personal slogan of mine has been based on Micah 6:8 -Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

To me, that is justice tempered with mercy, not just some sense of fairness or fulfilling the legal letter of the law, and it says do mercy that goes beyond that sense of fairness, beyond minimum requirements, because of the desire to be in relationship with God.

In I John 4: 16, John says: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God. Love can be a hard road to walk. But on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we are given the evidence of how much God understands just what he is asking. Jesus walked it too...he knows our weaknesses, how frail the flesh can feel, how deep anguish can go. First hand he has experienced how bitter the dust is when you fall, how it hurts to be wronged, the helplessness when a victim of injustice, how it feels to know people hate you, want to kill you, what it’s like to be lied about and tortured and slandered and killed for political reasons. He himself did what he asks us to do.

We’ll fall from his standard from time to time and again, but he will pick us up if we let him, and help us dust off, and get back up the road.

And he tells us to do the same with those we come in contact with. Teaching by example.

The love he demands of us isn't some spun sugar thing, hippie eyeglasses that see the world in rosy colors. The price he paid for this was heavy. The actions he expects of us are also heavy at times.

Love is seeing our fellow man as a child that God died to save, who has worth and value. Even if we don't like him, are frightened by him, or have been hurt by him. He showed us the way when he forgave the people who were putting him to death.

Love is forgiving, but forgiving doesn’t mean to abrogate your duties, to forget that the person you forgive for injuring you could be a danger, or a whole batch of silliness we seem to think love means.

Love means letting go of the hate. Love means to give up the reasons we use to treat our fellow as less than human. Love means to give up the prejudices, the hate chains we use to stop seeing a child beloved of God and create a lesser being.

Love is not necessarily an emotion, any more than forgiveness is. It is an act of will. It is forgiving because you were forgiven. It is being merciful, because God is merciful to you. It is responding as if we were doing things for Christ through the power of Christ because we love Christ, who first loved us.

Tonight, let us consider what he has done for us. And then in thankful admiration, pass on that gift wherever Christ leads us.

Labels: Following Jesus, Lenten meditations