Thursday, June 28, 2012

A God who stands by us

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

There you have the Gospel.

Jesus stood with the crowd. The crowd stood with him. The crowd listened to the word of God (which could be read as John said that Jesus WAS the Word or it could simply mean that Jesus' teaching was direct from God.

Jesus saw those he came in came in contact with. He drew crowds because of the Word he was teaching. He loved them all.

Today, with all the incredible advances in technology and such, we still haven't figured out a way to top the Gospel. The Gospel is love, the message is love, the Word is love. Love trumps all, doesn't it?

Jesus, suffering and beginning to die as surely as the sun begins to set each evening, took the time from the cross to ask the heavenly Father to forgiven them (us) for "they know not what they do."

Jesus, hated by many for doing nothing more than teaching a different message, a different bit of good news, continued to love when others (me, you?) would have thrown in the towel and stopped loving, paying bad for bad.

My point is this: We love a God who was completely, totally, without question fully human. He lounged with us. He worked with us. He taught us. He WAS one of us, like that song of the 90s tried to tell us. Just a slob like one of us, that's the God who forgives when forgiveness would seem to be impossible to manage.

That's our God. That's who we love. That's the Jesus who was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.

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