God so loved - love is from God because God is love; pure love, the essence of all that love is and can be. Love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love that does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love that never ends.
God so loved the world - the heavens and the earth that God created in the beginning, the heavens which declare the glory of God and the sky that displays what his hands have made, humankind that God created in his own image. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. God so loved he world that he created in the beginning.
God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. Our love is often less than this. We speak of those we love as being everything we need or as soul mates who complete us, but rarely talk in terms of giving all we have to others. Yet that is the nature of God’s love, he gives all he has to us.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son – the Father gives us his Son and the Son gives his life, his whole life, even unto death. Yet, because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God, this is a way of saying that what God gives to us is himself, everything he has and is. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life – God gives himself to us in order that we can become part of him and enter the very life of God himself. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it to the full. Eternal life is the life of love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share within the Godhead and in to which we are called to come and share by the ever-giving love that God the Father shows to us through God the Son.
God’s love has been revealed among us in this way, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. We live in the light of this love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. God so loved the world that he gave. How do we unwrap the gifts he has given?
God gave us the world in which we live, including the life that we enjoy now and the life that we will enjoy into eternity. One of the ways in which we unwrap those gifts is by means of appreciation. Taking a break to get outside and enjoy God’s creation or counting our blessings by beginning a list of all the things we’re grateful to God for including all areas of our lives - family, work, sport, food, sleep etc.
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Jesus is God’s greatest gift to us. We unwrap the gift of Jesus as we admit to our need for salvation and change. We receive Jesus through the gift of his Spirit, who enables us to change by focusing our thoughts and lives on Jesus. At every moment of every day, we can ask ourselves ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and allow the Spirit to answer that question by guiding our actions and words.
To support us in living as followers of Christ we have been given the gifts of the Bible (with its story of God’s dealings with the world he created and of Jesus’ sacrifice of himself for that same world), prayer (which brings us into conversation with God), the Church (the group of people locally who are seeking to go deeper into God and, together, to reveal God to their local community), and the gifts of the Spirit (talents and abilities given, not personal benefit, but for the benefit of others).
These are among God’s greatest gifts to us for which we should be truly grateful. We are used to the idea of saying grace (thank you) before enjoying the food we eat. In the same way, we could say grace before reading the Bible, conversing with God in prayer, coming to church, and using the gifts of the Spirit which have been given to us.
Lewis Hyde writes that ‘a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift’ and ‘the spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.’ Leo Buscaglia said, 'Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.’ St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12 that ‘the Spirit's presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.’ He follows his chapter on the gifts of the Spirit by sharing, in 1 Corinthians 13, the best way of all; that of love. God so loved the world that he gave; as God’s children and followers of Jesus, we too are to love the world by giving.
In Lent, as we reflect on all that Jesus has given for us and to us, it is also helpful to reflect on all that we can give back to God in thanks for his overwhelming generosity. Stewardship is about the ongoing contribution we make as Christian disciples; when it comes to the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contribution we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take.
We live in the light of Jesus’ love which reveals all that we can potentially be and become as human beings. In Lent, particularly, we come into the light of Christ by comparing our lives to his. As we do so, inevitably we find that we fall short; that our capacity to do what pleases him (by living out goodness, righteousness and truth) is less than his capacity for these things. Jesus, through his life and death, showed us the depth of love of which human beings are really capable and, on the basis of that comparison, we are challenged to become generous in the way that God is generous towards us.
God is love. Love is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave life, bringing the world into being.
Life is gift. The world is gift.
God so loved that he gave;
gave his one and only Son.
Of his own free will the Son
gave up all he had
and walked the path of obedience
all the way to death -
his death on the cross -
that we might have the gift of life.
Life is gift and giving.
Life without giving
cannot be living.
God so loved that he gave.
Love is unmerited gift,
to be given freely, willingly,
without expectation.
We do not love to be loved;
we love to love.
Love is the gift.
God so loved that he gave.
Love grows by giving.
The love we give away
is the only love we keep.
God so loved that he gave.
As his love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. God so loved the world that he gave – true love involves giving; in fact, true love is giving. As God’s love resulted in his giving himself to us and for us, so our response to him should be the same. May we use the opportunity of this Lent to reflect together on the love that God gives to us to also reflect on the contributions we make as Christian disciples, thinking about the money we give back to God, the talents we use in his service, the community contributions we make and the environmentally-friendly actions we take. Amen.
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Victoria Williams - Love.
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