ESV: Daily Reading Bible

Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Divine Mystery - Love for All

Ephesians 3:6 This mystery is [9] that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
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17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
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20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
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As unlikely as it may sound, I believe that I am a spiritual heir to the Jewish covenant and tradition. Ashamedly I don't know much about Judeism or even Catholicism, and I certainly think it would be good to learn more. But knowing all of the cultural nuances of this heritage isn't a prerequisite to receive the Love of God, which is the essence of the inheritance itself.
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God is love. If I must say anything else in explanation, it is only to ward off those dangerous perversions of love that you may assume are associated. God-love, or agape, is better than best friend love, better than lover love, better than homesick love, better than selfish pride. God-love is like all of those loves refined in a furnace, melted down, stripped of hidden bitterness and secret injustice. God's lavish love gushes, covering everything shameful, securing everything once wracked by fear, attending expertly to every wound. This is good news that God is like this, and yet it is so different from what many others say about God. We llok at the world and assume that God is like the world and that through the world we can understand God. God has attempted to tell us that the world has not and cannot, for the most part, understand Him. How could we possibly use the world, which is finite, to draw conclusions about an infinite God. He is mysterious.

1 comment:

Esther Plaster said...

the wounded surgeoun plies the steel that questions the distempered part beneath the bleeding hands we feel the sharp compassion of the header's art.

t.s. eliot
four quartets

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