Rejoice and be glad, all you saints:
You poor in spirit with shaky faith;
You who mourn, still in need of comfort;
You who get forced to the side by the currents of business as usual;
You who have the taste for balanced personal relationships and fair international policies but who yet hunger and thirst for such righteousness;
You compassionate ones who reach out for others, who open up to God, who offer yourselves for the peace to be made between people and with God;
And you who get whispered about or loudly ridiculed for being who you are and being for God:
Rejoice and be glad.
Christ is for you, right where you are, in the midst of all that is or is not going on with you. The Lamb of God is your shepherd, guiding you to springs of the water of life:
No more thirst;
No more hunger;
No more fears;
No more tears;
--God.
(Borrowing from C.S. Lewis) God has no hunger, only plenteousness that desires to give. God brings all things into being but has no need of any of it. At home in “the land of the Trinity”, God is Ruler of a far greater realm than the universe.
God, who needs nothing, brings everything into existence in order to love and perfect them.
God creates the universe, already seeing the buzzing crowd around the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven…
God is deliberately vulnerable in creating us, who exploit and take advantage of God. Yet, herein is love, the blueprint of love; God, the inventor of all loves.
God does not need to create. God loves, to create. God creates to love. God is love; gift-love.
God communicates to people a share of Gift-love. Divine Gift-love—God's love working in a person—desires what is simply best for another: not because the other is lovable, not because the other is attractive, or is related, or nice, or like-minded, or is deserving, or even in need; but just because the other is a person.
And God enables people to have this “Gift-love” as response to the Divine: To love God, not because God saves us, or for fear that God will condemn us; not because God is all-powerful or forsook all power and became one of us; but to give God love just because God is.
Of course, no one can give God anything; it all belongs to God already. But since it is only too obvious that we can withhold ourselves, our hearts and souls and minds, from God, we can, in that sense, also give them: What is God's by right, is nevertheless made ours in such a way that we can freely offer it back to God.
There is another way of giving to God: every stranger whom we feed or clothe, every surviving partner and spouse we protect, every orphan we adopt, every poor person to whom we give an honest opportunity is Christ.
You see, one cannot love God without loving the neighbor. But one cannot truly love the neighbor unless one loves God.
So, blessed are you who open up to God, reach out for others and offer yourselves as the peacemaking between people and with God.
And remember: the dullest or most uninteresting person you meet will one day be a creature who amazes you by the strong resemblance to Christ, or else horrifies you by the corruption such as you now meet only in a nightmare.
Yes, all day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities that we should conduct all our dealings with one another—all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal. It is immortals with whom we joke, work, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
Do you do all in your power to support these people in their life in Christ?
To live in a society of such creations, we must take each other seriously. Our love must be real and it will be costly.
To love one another, we must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer; and more in the light of the One who suffers for them and for us.
Jesus Christ. AMEN.
© Thomas F. Reese