6/30/13 Rev. David McArthur
I See The Love
Does the traditional god thought lift you to the next level of your spiritual journey? It does not support or nurture me. Yet, I still experience an amazing love.
An old mission church in remote New Mexico has a very plain room with a hole in the middle of the floor. Out of it I’ve seen people take the dirt and rub it on themselves, seeking healing which others have found there. The walls are lined with crutches and in the hallway outside there are many many pictures and letters about those healings. In Rome I have seen magnificent churches. They illustrate so fully the primitive god thought that was so prevalent at the time, that God is way up there and we’re down here. In one, people were singing with great beauty and love, their voices expressing a complete and total love for God. How these people understood God is not how I do, but their love of God touched me at depth!
In the walled city of ancient Jerusalem I passed a woman dressed in religious robes. When she looked at me, she sent such a great flow of love that it took my breath away and stopped me in my tracks. She chose to know love and it grew in her, around her, and was her. We shared God together. I was powerfully blessed—even now! Whether she was Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, I was certain she was deeply devout in her perception of God, which was probably as alien from mine as you can get, yet I experienced the love of God!
(From the gospel of John), Jesus said, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” In New Mexico, I saw the people in the love of the Father and the love of the Father in them—a beautiful love, visceral, so real I could step in and feel it. The people brought it there. It was there for me and from me. When we felt the love of the singers in Rome, we felt the one unifying, harmonious power that keeps our universe in order. We were in that love and it was in us. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t explain it that way. When I saw the woman in Jerusalem, she was in that love and it was in her. As my heart opened to receive it I was in that love.
Will we let ourselves experience that love, be one with it? I wish to be able to walk into any church and feel the love. Choose to see their love. Affirm with me, I am love; I behold the love in you. I am love; I behold the love in you. I am love; I behold the love in you. Can you do it in your family, where they do not understand your path, where words do not serve? Can you see their god thought and their love there? Can you see the world this way—where there is only love? There is only love!
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