Dear Friends
This weeks’ reading John 3: 1-16, reminds us that God’s love is not reciprocated by a world that lives in darkness. The light shines, but some will refuse to see God’s love. How do we know the world has not heard? How do we know that the darkness continues to fight against the encroachment of the light of God’s gospel? We know because the raw exercise of power dominates the world. We know because warfare continues to tear us apart. We know because peace is fleeting and suffering too easily inflicted.
We need to remember that John and his community hear this comfort and this admonition from a place on the margins. Theirs was not a place of power or privilege. To them, the promise of God’s love was not just another boost to their self-esteem, not another accomplishment along many others. Instead, God’s love was the sole anchor of life, the only source of hope in a hopeless world.
How do we receive this then as people in power and privilege? How do people who have so much experience a love so great that everything else pales in comparison? How do people of privilege receive this word of judgment intertwined with God’s love for the crushed and the suffering? We receive God’s love as an exhortation to step out into a world that may accept or reject us that may accept or reject Christ. We step into that world simply and only because God loves the world. God never ceases reaching out to the world in love and thus our call is never done as long as the world has not heard of God’s love for all.
We step in the world with humility and love. Let us be willing to relinquish our privilege, no matter the costs. Let us embrace that God’s love covers us all. In the end, we may find that in the light of God’s love, we are mere toddlers. We’re not sure of the words we speak. We’re not sure we know what we mean when we say love. But we sense it, we experience it, we know it but not in the way we know that two plus two is four. God has planted love in our hearts and called us to share that love with all we meet. So let’s continue to love, welcome, and embrace even if we don’t know what we’re doing.
InKosi ma ibe nani!
Solomzi