Daily Devotions

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us. 1 John 3:16-24

Christianity is a movement of people who are convinced that Jesus, a first century carpenter/teacher/mystic/healer/rabbi, who was raised in Nazareth, a small village in the hill country of Galilee, was the physical incarnation of God.  This is a great mystery to us, one we can never fully explain or understand, but we believe God took on human flesh so that God’s loving character might be revealed to the world.

We also believe that Jesus – although a well trained Jewish teacher, who never physically hurt a soul – represented a clear threat to the power base of the religious and political authorities of his day.  He was a victim of a conspiracy to silence him and end his influence upon people.  He was a disappointment to the crowds who expected him to be an earthly king.  Thus he stood alone when was arrested on trumped up charges and forced through a mockery of a trial that was more lynch mob than courtroom.  He was publicly beaten and crucified along with other common criminals as a visible example of the power and willingness of the Roman Empire to kill human beings in a most gruesome manner and thereby quell unrest and possible sedition.

But, on the third day, we believe God raised Jesus from the dead.  Jesus appeared alive again to his disciples and commissioned them to do as he did, to live as they saw him live, to treat people as they saw him treat people, to care for the needs of the poor and the broken as he did, and to tell the world the story that this whole thing is all about God’s love.

Cut through everything else about the Christian faith and that is what we are about.

We are living ambassadors for the King of Kings.  We are joined to Jesus in our baptisms, fed by Jesus in our worship life, and sent by Jesus to bring a qualitative difference to bear in our normal everyday lives.  We march to the beat of a different drummer.

We aren’t perfect in this.  Our track record sometimes isn’t good.  But we really are about loving, as we have been loved, about serving as we have been served, about sharing a life with others trusting that Jesus is still present in our midst.

When we are at our best, God uses us to make life better. 

There will always be those who argue that we are fooling ourselves, that we follow a fairy tale story, that we are weak-willed and weak-minded, that we use God as a crutch.  There will always be voices that point out our flaws, our failures, our hypocrisy, our short-sighted ways of using the faith to justify very ungodly decisions.

And to all of that we say, “Yeah, guilty of all the above. But God isn’t through with any of us yet and God loves you as much as we believe God loves us.”  And today we are going to give this thing called the Christian faith another go in our lives.  Because we want to.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, let’s keep things really simple today.  We want to follow you.  We want what you want.  We want to live as you have led the way.  We’re not always perfect in that but we trust that you are always perfect in your love, your forgiveness, and even in your trust in us to carry your message to the world.  We’ll do the best we can and we’ll trust you with the rest.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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