Blogging Towards Sunday, December 21st
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
Love
1 Samuel 7:1-16,
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26,
Romans 16:25-27,
Luke 1:26-55

This fourth and final Sunday in the season and journey of Advent is about Love. Not so much how much Mary loved the baby she'd bare, nor even how much Mary loves God. Rather I think it's a statement of how much God loves the whole deal: Mary, Us, the whole Universe. We wonder if it can be true when we see continued evil in the world such as warfare, natural disasters and injustice. Is God not strong enough to stop it? Or does God just not love us enough to bother using all that power to make things better? Those that have followed Jesus before us have had a different answer: God is both all powerful and all loving and these things remain.

As I think on this the song "Where is the Love" by the Black Eyed Peas come to mind [lyrics]



Black Eyed Peas Lyrics
Where Is The Love? Lyrics

What's remarkable in these passages is that God's love is known through, by and in us. We are called, like Mary, to be God bearers, to make God visible, active and interactive in our world through our actions, words, presence and relationships. Maybe God's love is more about solidarity than solutions, more like a mutually enriching dialogue than a decisive victory, more about participation than power. That's the kind of love I'm looking for. It seems so absent from our world whether in the governor's office in Illinois, or among shoe-throwers in Baghdad or among leaders in Sudan. We often ask where is God? Where is God's love? Mabye God is asking us, where are you?