When we are wounded, Jesus is our healer, and for deep and severe wounds, he is sometimes like our hospital. And the point of the hospital is to be healed to the point of getting out there and loving well again. We don’t have a mean coach, sending us out into the game to get wounded again. We have a loving father, who knows that He created us to be in relationship. Not only do we find life in the context of relating to each other, but we especially find it in that part of relating that requires us to lay down self and to give something more. It’s more than simply regaining life. We actually soar to new heights of living in working past the challenges and pressing on through the pain.
And so as difficult as it is sometimes, as much pain as it causes, Jesus calls us to actively love one another! He does not offer us himself as an alternative to actively loving the other 7 billion people on the planet. He does not offer himself as an excuse from actively loving the hundreds that we are personally acquainted with. He does not offer us a platform for holding on to arrogance, judgment, grudges, resentments, wounds, or the role of a victim. Instead he offers himself as the answer to the question “Where is the justice? Who will pay for all this? How does this work out well in the end?” Unlike the world we chose to create for ourselves, in choosing to claim for ourselves the knowledge of good and evil (and yet in our fallibility, requiring many judges), in the world He created, only one point of justice is required, for there is only one judge, and his judgment is perfect.
Recent Comments