Sweet Mystery

 Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17

This Sunday I was going to delve deeper into the mystery of God. Into the depths of being a blessing because that is God's charge to Abram. To leave his home and bless all the families of the earth. Bombs are not blessings.

This Sunday I was going to look at how every time we come to the scripture we find a place of comfort and rest from a weary world. How God's comfort is found even in the darkest times. The Psalmist writes of where we can look and see God's comfort, in the hills. Cloaked in the splendor and quiet of creation. Yet, right now, creation isn't as quiet as it should be for some.

Or I was going to say something about how Nicodemus, in the dark of night, comes to Jesus and how it is most likely that we come to Jesus when things are darkest. Maybe today is a come to Jesus moment for us all. 

Because of faith. Because of the faith Abram had. Think of the journey we are just starting today with Abram. He eventually becomes Abraham. He eventually has a bigger family and sons. He is asked to sacrifice a son. He is wandering in the desert. He bargains with God over the lives in a city. He has no place he calls home and feels threatened by others passing his wife off as his sister to keep them safe. It is a lifelong journey, a journey with just kinspeople and God. A journey of faith. It should represent our starting point.

Jesus asks us to leave the bearings of this life we know: consumerism, the best, the most, and the greatest to follow him. Follow him how. How can you say you have faith and not know? To be born from above. To put on God's eyes in everything we do. To love the world. And today feeling far from that is not surprising. 

How can we show this love? By loving our neighbor. By being willing to walk the way Jesus did. By pruning things we are holding onto as hurts and turning to a new way we might be asked to walk. God so loved the world-the entire world and we fall short of showing that love. There are days I know I do. What if we start seeing this world with God's eyes instead of our own?