Jack Hardaway
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We take so much for granted.
Food.
The earth.
Friendships.
Family.
Spouses.
Parents.
Children.
Church.
Freedom.
Safety.
Prosperity.
Health.
Democracy.
Like so many other things, we take love for granted. And like so many other things we don’t fully understand or appreciate what we have, until we almost lose it, or it is gone.
Love leaves a mark on us, where love has touched us, and hopefully we pass it along, that mysterious mark of love.
Like the silver bullet left behind by the Lone Ranger, marking where that mysterious masked stranger passed through.
Love is like God. We only know it because someone else touches our lives, touches us with love, touches us with God.
Neither can really be proven, only trusted in, because somehow our hearts have been changed; our souls set ablaze.
It is mysterious.
Love is. God is.
We think we know something about what and who they are, then something happens and we know that we know so little.
Peter, James and John, going up the mountain with Jesus. Blazing glory. Moses and Elijah. A divine showing, transcendent splendor and fear, words of love and the command to listen, to this one, this Jesus, who they thought they knew, but now they just don’t know.
Love touches the world in this one, and comes down the mountain in this one, into our lives, onto the cross, into death, and is gone.
Leaving the mark, the mark of love, the mark of God, of forever longing for what is just beyond our reach, the mystery that sets our souls ablaze.
We try to make God useful, appropriate God as a reason to hurt others, to control others, to hurt others. We use the Lord’s name in vain, we use God for our own vain purposes. We take God for granted. We take advantage of God.
Just like love.
Until.
Until something happens. The divine love burns away all that misuse and abuse.
And we bow before the mystery.
We come down the mountain wondering just what it means to rise from the dead.
To be alive.
To love.
To listen to this one, who is love.
Suddenly knowing that we know nothing and we start over, a new born babe.
We take so much for granted.
Then we are touched by love.
We are touched by God.
That burning mystery before which we bow and worship.
And we stand up, and try again.
Let’s see what happens this time.