Ephesians 3:17-19
Greetings! There may be days when I write nothing and today I am writing a lot. Sorry, if you are getting bored. I suppose i am recording this a lot for myself, as i don’t want to forget. Rather than try to write succinctly, I am sort of rambling just in case, someone taps me on the shoulder, then I will abruptly leave the blog for something real life! Ha.
So, first the true confession. Due to not wanting a heavy suitcase Pastor Nancy did not bring a Bible. I did not even bring my beloved Jesus Calling devotional book. Instead I bought a lightweight little book called The Message promise book. It is one of those collections of Bible verses based on topic. So this morning, I thought to myself, “Nancy jeepers, you need to read the Bible!” So I chose the topic of love and read several verses. All were great, and i was sitting outside by that fisherman who feeds cats and birds.... and all of a sudden I got tears in my eyes while reading Ephesians 3:17-19.
I figure tears that come out of no where, are possibly coming from Somewhere! Here is this passage from The Message Translation...
“With both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in...the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live, full lives, full in the fullness of God.”
Tears came to my eyes because these words reminded me of what is written on the back cover of The Divine Spark, “Everyone is created in the image of God. God’s creative work reflects the magnitude of diversity expressed through our unique sexualities and gender identities.”
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about meeting the English woman, Babs, yesterday. I will write about her next. One thing Babs said to me was how she met a woman who was in the English military along with Babs. This woman whose name was something like Gayla walked around humming or singing the familiar song “Jesus Loves Me.” Gayla lived out her life in deep struggle. She was taught that Jesus loved her and she loved Jesus, AND she also had same gender sexual attraction. All she knew was that this was an evil, lustful, tempting sin, so Gayla felt tormented much of the time.
To renounce the “sin” in her so she could continue to love and sing about Jesus’s love OR to renounce Jesus by giving in to the “sin.”
How can we help those who don’t quite see this yet, how can we help people see the connection...
between ‘God’s creative work reflected in the magnitude of diversity expressed through our unique sexualities and gender identities’. AND the idea from scripture that God’s love is deeper, wider, higher, fuller and more extravagant than anything we could ever imagine?
The tears came to my eyes because when we see this connection, we should weep at how God is portrayed as stingy and exclusive: messages religious people have been giving for centuries include: Yes, God is love, but, God hates your evil sexual same gender attraction. God hates your sin. God hates it that you are wearing the wrong kind of clothing!
Where is the extravagant, deep, wide and high love in statements like that?