Finding our Identity in God’s Love
As people of the Epiphany, we follow the one who was named Beloved from heaven, because we too find our identity in that love which calls us to love.
As people of the Epiphany, we follow the one who was named Beloved from heaven, because we too find our identity in that love which calls us to love.
When we let go of power and control, when we love our neighbor as ourselves, we end up like the wise men, overwhelmed with unspeakable joy.
We get to worship God, the transcendent, and we get to build God’s kingdom on earth, the immanent, because God came to this world on Christmas.
God, at Christmas, tells us that there will never again be a “for” that is not based on a fundamental, unalterable, everlasting, unswerving “with.”
This is the season of joy because of an act of love so radical and unbelievable, a love that can and will transform everything.
In a moment of love so radical we cannot fully comprehend it, we now have “God with us.” The creator God is coming into the world to save the world.
Peace comes through choosing to rest fully in the arms of the Great Physician, the one who will transform us with the Spirit and with refining fire.
We know how to live in light of all that is to come, both personally, with our own endings, and cosmically, with the end of the world as we know it. We live in love.
Hardship, as Jesus says, is inevitable, and it will come. But that hardship is also our opportunity as Christians to testify to goodness and to love.
St. Zacchaeus saw Jesus coming, ran toward him, climbed a tree to see him, and then gave what he could give so that he could walk in the way of love.
A life of prayer will ground us in a faith and in a relationship with God that will form us into a people best equipped to change the world around us.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” for not knowing enough modern-day lepers. Lead us into those relationships, that we may learn from them and love.