For a better understanding of the following story, read:
Genesis 1-4
Leviticus 24:19-20
The Gospel of John
This is a story about God and His perfect creation – humans. Just as God loved, so humans were created to love – to go out in creative goodness. So God placed them in a garden and made them free. But, even though they were created good, the first humans believed a lie and so became evil. They believed that God wasn’t good, and so they rejected God. But the moment they rejected God, they rejected the One who loved them perfectly. And in the absence of a Love that made them secure, they immediately felt insecure. They felt naked and ashamed, so they hid.
God looked for them. “Where are you?”, He asked, and they came out from hiding – a man and a woman.
God looked at the man. “Why did you reject me?”, He asked. The man blamed, “It was the woman you put here with me. She made me reject you.”
God looked at the woman. “Why did you reject me?”, He asked. The woman blamed too.
Ever since that day, men and women alike have struggled to regain their sense of security. God never stopped loving them, but it was hard for them to believe in His love because things weren’t perfect anymore. Every time a man or woman felt insecure, they would hide and blame, and in this way they were constantly withholding love and hurting one another.
And every time someone got hurt, he would feel insecure. Then he would overreact and hurt others. And those people would hurt more people until people didn’t really trust anyone anymore. So God decided to make a rule to keep them from destroying each other.
God said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
For awhile after that, there was at least some order. If someone was caught stealing, he had to repay what he stole. If someone wronged his neighbor, the neighbor wasn’t allowed to overreact. But he could expect justice – which meant fair compensation for the wrong done to him. Because people no longer loved creatively, God gave them the law so that at least, they might act justly and not destroy one another. But the people neither loved, nor were they just. They wanted justice for others but mercy for themselves.
For a time, reciprocity reigned, but even reciprocity needs Love to survive. People were good to those who were good to them but only until someone mistakenly hurt their neighbor. Whoever was hurt wouldn’t forgive as Love forgives, but instead would lash out, leaving the other person feeling misunderstood and insecure, which led to more lashing out, more evil and more insecurity. Ironically, people began destroying others and themselves all in the name of self-preservation. And in this way, humanity spiraled downward on its path of destructive evil until the day when everyone had forgotten about God and the garden.
People didn’t recognized good anymore, even if He stared them in the face.
And He did. God, who is in very nature Love, put on human flesh and came to earth to dwell among His broken people. He came to love them, but most did not recognize Love anymore. When He taught, they called Him a liar and demon-possessed. When He healed, they called Him a law-breaker. When He forgave, they called Him a sinner. When He fed them, they refused to be filled.
Satan can make a crooked line seem straight.
It seemed Satan was winning. It didn’t matter how much God loved His people. Humans just continued in their insecurity and destructiveness, refusing to see Love until they had finally followed their destructive path to its logical end:
They destroyed Love itself.
They destroyed their Creator.
God, who is Love, came in the flesh to love His people, and – not recognizing Him – they treated Him as evil. They mocked Him, stripped Him, beat Him and nailed Him to a cross. As they mocked His torture, He could not hide. He did not blame. Instead, He forgave them until breath left His lungs and His heart stopped. He died creatively loving His own destroyers and then was laid to rest in a lonely tomb.
The next day was quiet and still.
It was as if the story of all creation had ended in tragedy, and everyone in the theatre sat silently longing for more while knowing that no more was possible now that the Author had ceased to exist. Even Satan held his breath, surprised that the nothingness of evil could wholly consume something as substantial as Love.
But the cross is an intersection, and an intersection is a place where paths meet and diverge in the same instant. It is an end as well as a beginning. What if in the same instant that humans insecurely destroyed their Creator, He was unconditionally loving and forgiving them? What if that is our God? What if our God is good? What if He is a God who interrupts the spiral of destruction with grace, re-creating everything that was destroyed with unconditional love and undeserved favor?
The people mourned:
“How could we have destroyed our Lover?”
“How could we have destroyed our Creator?”
……………..
……………..
On the third day,
The people repented:
“Where are You, Lover?”
“Where are You, Creator?”
They flocked to His tomb, mourning and repenting, hoping for the comfort of His presence one last time, however lifeless it might have been. But when they arrived, the tomb was empty, and a Man was walking through the nearby garden in the cool of the day. They did not recognize Him until He began to call them each by name. And as He spoke the names of the people, the eyes of each person were opened, and they saw that He was their Lover! They saw that Love cannot be destroyed.
Love begets love begets love begets love and so on as every name He calls goes out in creative goodness. For those who have received Him are secure. They continue not in enslaved self-protection but in freedom and bold love until all creation knows its true value increasingly more forever and ever.
This is the good news:
Your Lover is here, and He’s asking for you.
Where
are
you?
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the story never gets old!!!