way round. God is the center and we should live our lives for the glory and purposes of God.
This flawed way of living the Christian life means we have
expectations regarding the way God should act towards us and on our behalf. Usually, we have the idea that God should jump to our attention. Some have the idea that God is their butler.
That things are different is a lesson we need to learn, however
confronting and painful that may be. St. John Chrysostom begins to point us in the right direction. He writes, God “does not cut calamities short at the outset, but averts them only as they approach their climax when
almost all have abandoned hope.”50 Thus, God does not wrap us up in
cotton wool. But God does come to our aid.
And God is not at our beck and call. God has his own sovereign way with us. God’s way with us is one of love and care, but so often God works differently than our expectations. Thus in faith we have to embrace God’s strange way with us.
Prayer
I will with difficulty bend my will to yours, O God, and embrace your mysterious way with me. Amen.
James 2:1–5
February 20
Equality
It is stating the obvious to say our world is deeply divided: the first world and the two-thirds world; rich and poor; the powerful and the oppressed; majority groups and minorities. In the community of faith it can and should all be very different.
Throughout the entire Bible there is a consistent message that God has a heart for the poor and powerless and such persons should be treated with love, care, and justice.
That message is in the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. If there is anything that is clear in the biblical story, it is this message: love of God involves love of neighbor and in particular the poor, the fatherless, the widow, those in distress, those oppressed, and those in need. Thus to have a Christian heart is to have a heart for the poor.
The place where this great generosity of heart should begin is in the community of faith. But often this is not the case, hence the challenge of St. Augustine. He writes, “But it ought never to be that in thy Tabernacle the persons of the rich should be welcome before the poor, or the nobly born before the rest.”51
The great vision of Scripture is a new humanity in Christ. This is a humanity in which the way of Christ is embodied and where the old ethnic, economic, and gender barriers are broken down. When the church lives this vision, its witness will be revolutionary. Living this vision could change our world.
Reflection
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”
(Gal 3:28).
Psalm 119:124–25
February 21
Love of Knowledge
The Christian life is all about faith, love, and prayer. But it is also about the knowledge of God and in that light our
knowledge of ourselves and of our world.
Sometimes in certain circles of Western Christianity things are played off against each other. Work is played off against prayer. Spirituality is played off against daily duties and responsibilities.
But the Christian life can only be lived well as an integrated whole. Head, heart, and hand; knowledge, spirituality, and service, belong
together. The one dimension impregnates the other.
St. Bernard points us towards a further integration, the inter-
connectedness between love and understanding. He writes, the one “who understands truth without living it, or loves without understanding,
possesses neither the one nor the other.”52
To love God also means knowing God and this knowing is both
informational and existential. In other words, we know things about God and we know God experientially.
This is equally true of the neighbor and our world. To love the
neighbor well involves knowing our neighbor. And to know the neighbor in love is to truly know him or her.
Equally we are invited, not simply to know things about our world, but to love our world—to love our world for the sake of Christ. This means to love our world redemptively and transformationally.
Thought
To know and see in love is to see truly.
Hebrews 12:3
February 22
Strong and Gentle
To be marked by love does not mean one is weak. Rather, it means one’s strength is used, not to exploit, harm, or dominate, but to build up, nurture, and care.
Because there is such stress in the biblical story on love and humility, one can easily misread this to mean Christians are to be gullible, exploitable, and weak. This is a serious misreading of Scripture.
Moses was called the meekest or humblest man in all the earth. But he was the great prophet-leader of Israel, used by Yahweh to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity and oppression. Thus one can be strong and gentle at the same time.
St. Ambrose makes this point more generally. He writes that the “man who is both severe and gentle is blessed: his severity, by striking terror maintains discipline; his gentleness does not crush innocence.”53
While we may want to word this somewhat differently, the point is clear: strength and love can go together. In fact, love is a particular form of strength. It is strength expressing itself in caring ways.
And to put all of this differently, there is nothing weak about love and humility. To love is to be strong and to be humble is simply to recognize that the sources of a strong love lie in the goodness of God in our lives.
Thought
To be strong without love can lead to domination. To be strong in love is true freedom.
1 Corinthians 3:11
February 23
Forerunners for Jesus
The Christian life is to live in Christ and to live for Christ.
Living for Christ is to live in such a way, in the power of the Spirit, that people will be attracted to Christ, will consider Christ, and will embrace him. Thus we are to be a sign pointing to Christ.
The desert fathers lived their lives to point to Christ. They believed certain qualities would
