Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

• 1 John 4:7-12

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
…
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

• John 1:1-5, 14

“As God became a human being and can be known no longer as an idea, but only as one who has become human, so the love of God also took on worldly form. And only as such-and not as a vague idea-is it the love of God.
“Love, which, in distinction from all philosophy, is what the gospel is all about, is not a method of interacting with human beings. Rather, it is being drawn into and entering into an event, namely, into God’s communion with the world that took place in Jesus Christ. ‘Love’ does not exist as an abstract characteristic of God but as the real event of people and the world being loved by God. ‘Love’ also does not exist as a human characteristic but as the real belonging together and being together of people with people and the world on the basis of God’s love for me and for them. As God’s love went into the world and surrendered itself to the misunderstanding and ambiguity of everything worldly, so Christian love also exists in no other way than in the world, in the infinite fullness of concrete worldly actions, subject to every misinterpretation and prejudice.  The love of God frees us from human vision, which is clouded by self-love and has gone astray, and frees us for the clear knowledge of the reality of neighbor and world. In this way-and only in this way-it prepares us for the acceptance of genuine responsibility.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for March 17, devotions compiled from his writings)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a beautiful statement here that Jesus becoming flesh and dwelling among us blows the idea of a vague concept that God loves us.  Jesus becoming flesh and dwelling among us cements God’s love in our reality – if we could only see it.

Jesus said a few times at those who have ears should hear.  Anyone that heard Him say that had ears, but did they have ears that could understand on a spiritual level?

I have read too many commentaries on the idea that Jesus was just a good teacher.  He does not give us that option.  Jesus was born.  He lived among us.  He died.  He rose again.  He proved He was God in the flesh.

So, an hour once a week is what you do for a vague concept that something a preacher said years ago is true.

Living the life of loving our neighbor every day is what happens when Jesus is no longer vague, no longer a concept, but Jesus is the only reality that matters.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.