Good Morning, My Friends!
I hope this email finds you safe and dry and warm and full of the knowledge of the deep, deep love that God has for you. As we live in this world that is filled with controversy and anger and violence and division, that lovely fact is one we simply cannot afford to forget. I have spent the morning trying to help a homeless man find a place to sleep tonight. No easy task! Realizing that he is only one – only one out of the millions who are homeless or poor or hungry or in the midst of warfare that has destroyed their homes and their cities, or migrants who are seeking a safe place to live and raise their families……. The list can go on and on. Well, it’s enough to make you want to cry.
That’s why it’s so important to remember that God is a God who loves and wants only the best for all humanity – not a distant God who doesn’t care. Each human being on this planet is dear to God. That’s what Lent is about: remembering the great cost of that gift of love in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
Here’s the thing though – the Bible tells us that because God loves us all – we are to love us all as well! Sound impossible? In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Atticus Finch gets it just right: You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. My hope for us all this week is that we find ways to understand – to consider things from someone else’s point of view……and that as we are walking around with them in their life, we might find at least one little way to share the love of God with them. My, oh my! What a difference that would make!