Thanksgiving Week 1

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.  Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

How do you know what you know?  That question has been around for centuries.  Perhaps in college you even had to take a class on theories of knowledge when you asked the question, “What is the foundation for facts?”  Such a question seems as important today as ever.  We swim in a sea of questioning the legitimacy of scientific reports or election results or everyone tossing and throwing around the word, “Fake news”.

So, now you are thinking, “Thanks for that uplifting insight, Pastor Eeyore!”

Or

Not exactly the way to start Thanksgiving week! 

Yet, when the writer 1 John says that we will, “know,” I wonder about that word in this world we inhabit.  How do we know what we know?  This question is one worth spending time with this week.  Perhaps we can start with the affirmation that we don’t always know ourselves or others as well as we think.  There are countless times during the week I think, “Why did I do that?”  Or times I say things I instantly and immediately regret.  I start by naming that I can be a mystery to myself.  Then, there are other times that a truth stirs and swirls within me from my mind, heart, soul, felt from my pinkie toe to the top of my head.  It can be a deep knowing, perhaps even beyond words. 

Love works that way.

I can’t prove that I love my family.  But I know it to be true and long to live every moment guided and ground by that truth.

I can’t prove God’s love.  But I experience and encounter the holy hovering and hanging around my life in many ways.  I pray that I might be led by such sacred affection.

I can’t prove that love is stronger than hate.  Yet, I know the former can feed and fuel my life in faithful/life-giving ways and later one leaves me fearful and feeling alone.

Such love isn’t only sentiment, it is sacred action.  Such love doesn’t just warm the heart, it compels and challenges what I do and say.  The author of 1 John is clear that love isn’t only an emotion, it is the way we will experience and encounter God.  In what ways can love define and determine your life today?  Before you answer, I encourage you to be as concrete as you can.  Examples include, “I could let God’s love loose when I talk to this person.”  Or, “I can let God’s love ground and guide me in that meeting.”  Or, “I prayerfully ask for God’s love to led me when I go here.”  1 John makes repeated use of the word, “love” not just because the writer desperately needed a thesaurus; but because only such dogged and determined returning to the love of God will get us through.  To return to God’s love for all because love is the pathway to God.  This truth that can make all the difference in our lives and world at such a time as this.

Prayer: God grant me strength to not only read these words intellectually, but live them in my life this day, especially when I go (fill in the blank here).”  Amen.