God's Overarching Love - September 30, 2024
AM Psalm 89:1-18; Hosea 2:14-23; Acts 20:17-38; Luke 5:1-11
The readings for this morning remind me of how incredibly broad the arms of God stretch. I know for myself, sometimes it’s hard to remember how immense God’s reach is. There are times when I feel as though God is so close, that I need to remind myself that God’s also holding the children who are caught in the middle of the horrific violence of the war in the Middle East. In places so far away that I have no concept of the distance. That none of us is ever alone.
The God we see in the Hebrew Bible can seem quite distant at times. There are long stretches when God’s chosen people feel totally abandoned and alone. There are images of a wrathful, enraged God and then today in Hosea there are images of a God so tender, so loving, so present it brings me to tears. The immense breadth of God’s love for God’s children knows no limits. Neither does God’s presence know any limits.
In the reading from Luke for today, Jesus asks the not-yet-called disciples to have faith in him, to trust, to take a step-outside of their comfort zone. Perhaps they intuitively knew, he could be trusted, however, it was definitely a risk, one that proved worth taking.
This past week our community experienced the shock of another mass shooting that was way too close to home. Like so many communities across our nation, where mass shootings are commonplace, there are now flowers and touching memorials in Southside where four lives were taken and many more were injured. It was disheartening to realize something so deadly could happen so close to home, in an area where families gather, where my family has frequently celebrated birthdays and spent time together, never not feeling safe. A place so close that if I had been on my back porch I could have heard the gun fire. Unfortunately, the community of Saint Stephen’s knows what this intrusion feels like much better than I do.
God’s infinite capacity to touch our lives, to be engrained in the very fiber of our being, far surpasses what I can mentally conceive. Perhaps that’s why our faith is so vitally important. To trust those things, we are assured of even though we have limited capacity to even imagine the possibility.
Even though life is full of uncertainty, we also live under the shadow of God’s watchful, loving presence, and no matter how removed we may feel from God, God is never removed from us. The simple fishermen became the cornerstone of what became the church. Their faith and love for Jesus grew and they followed him even to their death. Hosea spoke a message of unending love by God for the people of Israel, even though they had proven over and over to be incapable of faithful, obedience.
I pray that our community has faith in God’s power to heal, to be present and to bless even the worst of circumstances and bring light to solutions in situations where there appears to be none.
Faithfully,
Sally+
Questions to Challenge and Reflect: When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone to be present to others? What might you do to demonstrate your faith in God’s overarching presence and healing power?