"How great is the love that God has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)
Jason Gray, "Remind Me Who I Am" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8
Remember the parable where Jesus speaks of the Realm of God being like a person who, having found a treasure in a field, sold everything he or she had in order to buy the field and gain the treasure.(Matthew 13:45-46). We are usually taught that we are the person in the story who needed to give up everything in order to gain the Realm of God. However, in the other parables surrounding this one, the “person” in the story is always God.
What if God is cast as the person in this parable, too?
Is God the one who gave everything in Jesus in order to recover us?
Could it be that we are God’s treasure?
Could we be God's Beloved?
Beloved is one of the most beautiful words in the Bible. It's a key principle God teaches us about Godly love.The word "beloved" derives from the Hebrew meaning "to breathe" to "long for." It is used of human love as well as divine love. It is a word indicating an action on the part of the one doing the loving. The God of the universe, the same God who paints a sunset, shapes a mountain and plans the waves at the beach -- longs for us. Our role in this is to BE-LOVED. As automatic as it is for us to breathe, so God loves us. Can we stop ourselves from breathing, under normal circumstances? No. So God doesn't stop loving, caring longing, for us.
So our spiritual task is to daily open to divine presence so we can live in such a way that God's love "breathes" through our actions and words. This is, in part, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of his social justice work: the creation of a "beloved community" where we would all live by the dictates of this God-breathed love--which translates into justice, fairness and integration, mutual care, in our community life.
Everyday, remember you are God's Beloved. So take action -- make your corner of the world a Beloved place!
Listen
PRAYPra
Jason Gray, "Remind Me Who I Am" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8
Remember the parable where Jesus speaks of the Realm of God being like a person who, having found a treasure in a field, sold everything he or she had in order to buy the field and gain the treasure.(Matthew 13:45-46). We are usually taught that we are the person in the story who needed to give up everything in order to gain the Realm of God. However, in the other parables surrounding this one, the “person” in the story is always God.
What if God is cast as the person in this parable, too?
Is God the one who gave everything in Jesus in order to recover us?
Could it be that we are God’s treasure?
Could we be God's Beloved?
Beloved is one of the most beautiful words in the Bible. It's a key principle God teaches us about Godly love.The word "beloved" derives from the Hebrew meaning "to breathe" to "long for." It is used of human love as well as divine love. It is a word indicating an action on the part of the one doing the loving. The God of the universe, the same God who paints a sunset, shapes a mountain and plans the waves at the beach -- longs for us. Our role in this is to BE-LOVED. As automatic as it is for us to breathe, so God loves us. Can we stop ourselves from breathing, under normal circumstances? No. So God doesn't stop loving, caring longing, for us.
So our spiritual task is to daily open to divine presence so we can live in such a way that God's love "breathes" through our actions and words. This is, in part, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of his social justice work: the creation of a "beloved community" where we would all live by the dictates of this God-breathed love--which translates into justice, fairness and integration, mutual care, in our community life.
Everyday, remember you are God's Beloved. So take action -- make your corner of the world a Beloved place!
Listen
PRAYPra
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