Love is the Stuff of God

​“Love is the Stuff of God”
On May 30, the church celebrated the Feast of the Holy Trinity.  It is the annual Christian festival dedicated to the deepest mystery of who God is: one God, Three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The operative word is “mystery.”  No one can explain it or even fathom this distinctness of persons within the unity of God.  The best we can do is consider it, ponder it, try to name it, seek to understand why it even matters in Christian theology.
Over the years, I have meditated on St. John’s truth in his First letter, saying that “God is love” (1 John 4.7). I believe that somehow the Love that is God is the stuff of God.  For sure, it must be a love that is purer, deeper, more expansive and beyond encompassing any human experience or conception of love in this mortal life.  The mystery of the Trinity invites us to believe this is possible--that God is bigger than we are, and not one made in our own image; that God’s love is bigger, too. So much beyond our experience and reason and even imagination.
In God’s wondrous and mystical love, there is a unity of persons.  A constant, self-giving, generative love that must have been active when all things came to be.  This love calls to us, calls us to be swept up into it and to be drawn closer and closer to God, and to one another.
St. John: “Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love.”
Out of the mystery of who God is, flows the heart of what it means to be Christians in community.  Our movement into the love of God is the only thing that can form and transform us into people who love. 
As we are moving back into physical presence with one another in worship and fellowship, this word to us, “lets love one another,” is in God’s call back together.  I know we are missing our rituals and songs and the physical house of our congregation.  But, even more, I’m hearing that we are missing ONE ANOTHER.  And this is at the center of what we must be about in these coming days of our regathering.  Let’s be looking for new ways to get together, so share common life, to learn about one another and grow in love for each other.  During the summer, I urge and encourage each of us to:

• Have some folks over for dinner or meet up at a restaurant where you all feel safe.
• Make at least one phone call per week to someone you haven’t seen for too long.
• Come back to church at least one Sunday per month.  (If you aren’t ready for inside, plan for Holy Communion on the Labyrinth—last Sundays of the month at 5 pm.)
• Pray daily for the folks on our prayer list and others whose needs are known to you.

These are simple basic steps we can take to move back into relationship with one another after a long year apart.  I hope you will take this encouragement to heart and make steps toward connection in loving Community.
God is love.  And God calls us to share together in that love, to be formed into a people who are known by their loving.
Scott