Listen

You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

Ephesians 2:8-10

Think

One of the traps of the world is believing that not only do we have to earn God’s love, but there must be a finite amount of it. After all, humans can only love so much.

Not so fast, you humans! In our passage for today we are reminded in no uncertain terms that God’s love is not earned by what we do or by worldly pursuits. It’s not earned at all! It’s grace freely given. God creates us in love and never stops loving us.

God’s love transcends our own individual experience and connects us to generations and ancestors before and ancestors and generations to come.

Again, for the people in the back, there is nothing that we have done or could do to earn or lose the love that God offers — and this is the good news. We can live into and out of the good news of God’s love, letting it shape who we are and how we are in the world.

Bruce Reyes-Chow

Question to Ponder:

Why do we sometimes think we have to earn God’s love or that we can lose God’s love?

Pray

Inhale: God, you are here.

Exhale: Grant me the courage to live into and out of your love.

Go

Go forth into the world with justice and compassion in your heart.

Amplify voices of the long silenced.

Name strength in that which has been deemed weak.

Hear one another.

See one another.

Care for one another.

And love one another.

It’s all that easy.

And it’s all that hard.