I stood in my prayer alcove and just looked out, admiring
the glorious morning. Another glorious morning. In Scotland, we are not used to
day after day of blue sky and sun but that is the reality of our September and
early October 2015.
A blackbird dotted in and out of the dying undergrowth. A
smaller bird flicked out of the rowan tree. A car came up the road. A cow
meandered through the field. I tried to focus. To concentrate. To hear what God
was saying to me through the variety.
I breathed deep and listened. I breathed deeper and
listened. My thoughts slowed. Lighten my darkness, I prayed. Let there be
light. Enlighten my thinking. Sometimes when I focus on God I feel a pressure
in my head. Not altogether comfortable, but reassuring somehow. I sense that
perhaps he is rewiring things in there. That he is transforming my mind so that
as I look out at all the disparate things in my world, I sense a pattern. His
pattern.
This morning I sense that pattern is love. Love. That
despite the desperate news of yet another mass shooting on a campus in the USA,
despite the increasing threat posed by IS and the military intervention of
superpowers, despite the anguish of millions of refugees: love is the power
that never fails. It may look a mess right now, because God has honoured us
with free will and allows us to make our own choices. Including choosing to
reject his ways. God has so honoured us because he loves us, and in the end,
love wins.
We saw it on the cross. The pattern this morning is love,
and it looks like a cross. Brutal. Sacrificial. Costly. Incomprehensible.
The love that kept Jesus nailed to the cross, raised him
from death three days later.
Lighten my darkness, Lord Jesus. Help me to see this day and
all of its disparate threads through the lens of the cross.
No comments:
Post a Comment