"I can believe that God loves other people, but how could he love me after all I've done?"
In our humanness, we're inclined to love those who are easy to love and to keep our distance from those who we find offensive or difficult. But that's just us.
God is more loving that we are.
Even though we may not yet be capable of it ourselves, we do recognize extraordinary love when we see it or hear about it.
When we'd hear about Mother Theresa giving up her life of comfort to help the poorest of the poor in India, we all recognized this as a higher form of love.
And, on the other side, if we hear a person idolizing a movie star for his or her looks and style, we recognize this as an immature form of love, an adolescent love.
We have a sense of the gradations of love, going from the least, which is based on superficiality, to the more noble, which is based on the intrinsic worth of every human being.
Where do you think the love of God falls on that scale?
Off the top, of course. His love for us exceeds the greatest human love ever seen. God's very nature is love, whereas human nature is a mixture of love and selfishness.
Jesus showed us God's kind of love in the years that he lived among us.
He loved the prostitute, the outcast, sinners of all varieties. He didn't come to judge us, but to heal us. He didn't come to condemn us, but to reconcile us to himself and to his Father, the Creator of all that is.
Jesus sat at table with the leaders of the community and with those who others shunned. Surely, were he here today, he would invite you to his table.
His Spirit is here today, and he does invite you to his table. The only people who he won't sit with, are those who refuse to sit with the others he has invited.
Read on . . .