Here is love, vast as the ocean,
Loving kindness as the flood,
When the Prince
of Life, our Ransom,
Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can
never be forgotten,
Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.
On the mount of crucifixion,
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the
floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heav’n’s
peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.
In Thy truth Thou dost direct me
By Thy Spirit through Thy Word;
And
Thy grace my need is meeting,
As I trust in Thee, my Lord.
Of Thy fullness Thou art pouring
Thy great love and power on me,
Without measure,
full and boundless,
Drawing out my heart to Thee.
…………………
Here
is Love; Love, a quite outworn word in our time, or rather misused;
Too often used
as only pointing to some sort of human intimacy moments, whether it is within marriage, just for fun, or something to sell
or buy.
I would not here take any stand in this as such, what’s right
or wrong in human understanding of Love, but sometimes it is difficult to really understand the complicity of genuine love.
Also in the Bible the different words for Love is used for the whole spectrum of aspects whether
it is human bodily desire or the outgiving sacrificial love we find in Jesus.
In
Jesus we see the love that gives it all, without excuses or ifs. That is the total love, the main source of human comparison
and needs. Illustrated in the life of Jesus we see the ultimate power of the universe, of God. And from that source all that
is true love originate whether it is visualized in human desires or it is the total unconditionally giving of one self.
True Love, says Paul and Jesus as well, is something we give without conditions, without hesitations.
And the best illustration of that is Jesus; who is Gods love for his creation, for you and me. The love that spared nothing,
that actually risked everything for people that really did not understand what true love was.
The whole Bible is story about human failure to live in harmony; it’s a story of humans who have forgotten
their humanity, a story about greed, lust, egoism and hate. A story about sins if you so want.
If the Bible would have a third part, dealing with the present time the story of human failure would continue.
But the Bible also tells us about how God in the midst of this is working with a different
aspect on life. A life based on Love and that is actually what it is all about.
In
the midst of tears and suffering, in the midst of human inhumanity God is raising a sign of love; a cross for people, a cross
that is the healing of nations, the healing of humanity.
“When the Prince
of Life
Shed for us His precious blood
and
opened up the fountains,
deep and wide flowing of Grace and Love.
Love, like a mighty river,
field with heavenly peace and perfect
justice”
And who am I to be able to wash my self in that Grace?
Who am I, Who are we, Who are the people of old, the people of to day, of ancient time and
time that is. What have we done to deserve that Grace, that unconditional Love?
I
don’t know!
And I surely don’t know from listening to the news or hearing
people’s stories in confidence late at night.
I suppose, as humans, our qualifications
in loving and sharing is not the best.
But as it says in the hymn;
“God kissed a guilty world in love”
God sees the
sins, the transgressions, the imperfections of humanity and I suppose he don’t like it but he must also see something
else.
He sees a world that can bloom in glory, he sees humans sometimes capable
of giving and sharing. he sees that deep inside we bear something good, something holy.
We
have an original blessing hidden behind all the sins and sorrows, we ourselves and the world has given us.
That’s why I am convinced that God can see something good even in me, something worth loving,
and something worth saving.
And if he can see something in me he definitely can see
something in you!
I remember when I was a prison chaplain, sitting in a cell
with a hard criminal and noticed that my self.
When he came to a point where tears
finally started to flow down his cheek, when things started to fall apart, when walls of ignorance and hate were falling,
I noticed that he was just a frightened child, crying for shelter, for help and peace.
Somewhere
deep inside that criminal was just a lost child in time, in need for true love, a love that he never had given himself opportunity
to experience.
(I don’t blame him, because so often that opportunity is taken
away from people by alcohol, abusing parents and a society that prefers to judge and punish than to save and encourage.)
I suppose that criminal, by just returning to his deepest inside, a journey back to live source
and there experience real love is the only way to be reborn. Reborn into a life where love is the guide not fear, envy and
greed.
(I can tell stories I hear from lonely outcaste pregnant teenagers who had
believed that love was just for fun or when you were drunk and friendless.)
The
journey back to source within us and thereby to God is something we all have to undertake. That because there we can find
the true source of Love so that we as Paul says;
“Can grow up into being a
part of Christ whatever imperfections we have”
-For the given.
-For the shed.
The Holy Communion; The moment when God’s
perfect love is yours.
By reaching there; by feeling “The kiss of Christ love”
we are able to be filled with real love.
A love we need so that we can love ourselves
and others in different ways. Giving unconditional love to those we meet, to near and dear, in intimate moments as well as
in day to day life.
The love of God, flowing through us to others.
A love that is the foundation of true humanity therefore I dare to say that without God there is no
true humanity and without God’s love there is no real humanism
“In Thy
truth Thou dost direct me
By Thy Spirit through Thy Word;
And Thy grace my need is meeting,”
AMEN
Dan
|
