“Love the One You’re With”, could be a CSN lyric,
yet how better to think: “LOVE, LOVE the LOVE your IN”.
LOVING the God with us, that we ARE with – as He is with us, in us, FOR us.
Love the God you’re in. And He is One. And He is One IN love with us all.
I have some of that sand leftover from my children’s craft projects in jars 10-15 years ago, beautiful those layers of color they placed just so. How narrow the opening was for them to funnel sand in, and try not to spill over. Eventually at the end, you had to knock the container to settle the sand, and the packed nature was to keep all in place. A display for all to see, each grain important. Each grain unique and structuring the next.
We are to be God’s people, to be His actions and people. He considers us more than just His specks of dust as we are carefully placed grains to cover the earth with His love. Together, God and Jesus poured Heaven into a man on earth, as an impression of God’s image, still fully God but walking being totally of a man. Surely He came to show us that He wants to pour us all back into Him. Think of the mirror flip of Him stepping into a man’s skin – and instead about us stepping into His Skin, filling it like the unique individuals that we are, then HE moves us all together and forward.
The meaning of life is all about fulfilling God’s Promise, holding to His Principles, and accepting His Love. Jesus was set into the world to teach God’s love and to CRUSH the evils. Jesus tended to the soil and cultivated the good crops so that God Himself saw only blooms among the weeds, us covered by Jesus’s Light. By His immense LOVE, Jesus could only be the sacrifice He accepted for Himself. It was a uniting force of love to complete the journey that we are walking on. In the ultimate wedding banquet, God wants us at His Table. He wants us in His sand bottle, but not for display. Rather He wants us in His movable Skin to be the Love He Lives.
Jesus loves to pour Himself into us. Jesus and God and Holy Spirit are ONE in LOVE and unique in LOVE. ONE is not “divide and conquer” but UNITE and SAVE. We are taught how to live and love for others to know Him thru us. Moses wrote and told what God said: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children….. be careful that you do not forget the Lord…. (Deut 6)
Jesus was tested and described the meaning of God’s law in quoting scriptures (He was quoting Himself): The greatest commandments to be loved and to love (See Mark’s gospel below). Jesus poured into His Walk the fortitude to bring God with us. Like a human version of the jar sand sculpture. Let us check with Him daily and have the Holy Spirit conviction to place our sand grains and dust in alignment with Him. Let us pray to hear: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
On His journey, on the mountains and in the valleys, Jesus strengthens and is strengthened. We too must ask for His Hand molding our grains of sand, of love, EVERY DAY. We DO know the plan, and still every day we must ASK to be placed where the Lord wants to pour us.
Be sand at His Command.
Love the Love you’re in.
Amen
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One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question. (Mark 12)
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The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. (Deuteronomy 7)
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IMAGINE that conversation with Moses and Elijah and JESUS on the mountain of His Transfiguration. Imagine Moses had been chatting with God all along as God has been chatting with him. Imagine to have been with God, to know the plan, and yet still take time to chat. They could look at all those offspring of Abraham now as grains of sand…
The Transfiguration
After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. And they asked him, “Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?” Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him.”
Debbie Upper 