All posts tagged love

  • March 8, 2015

    Love Never Ends: A Meditation

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    Love Never Ends: A Meditation
    Brian Zahnd

    Why is there something instead of nothing?
    The only answer I can imagine is Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God…
    But why would God say, “Let there be light” and initiate Creation?
    The only answer I can imagine is God is love.

    What is light? God’s love in the form of photons.
    What is water? A liquid expression of God’s love.
    What is a mountain? God’s love in granite, so much older than human sorrow.
    What is a tree? God’s love growing up from the ground.
    What is a bull moose? God’s love sporting spectacular antlers.
    What is a whale? Fifty tons of God’s love swimming in the ocean.

    As we learn to see Creation as goodness flowing from God’s own love—
    We begin to see the sacredness of all things.
    As Dylan and Dostoevsky say, in every grain of sand.
    All of creation is a gift — a gift flowing from the self-giving love of God.

    Why is there light and oceans and trees and moose and whales and every grain of sand?
    Because God is love — love seeking expression in self-giving creativity.
    Unless we understand this we’ll misunderstand everything and misspend our lives.
    In our misunderstanding and misspent lives we harm Creation—
    Including our sisters and brothers, all of whom bear the image of God.
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    12 Comments / Christianity, love, Theology /

  • July 28, 2014

    A Dusting of Snow During a Bloody Summer

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    A Dusting of Snow During a Bloody Summer
    Brian Zahnd

    It’s been a bloody summer. In Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.
    Kill the bad guys and there will be peace is the tired refrain.
    All sides say it. Ad infinitum.

    (I didn’t even mention the bloody streets of America, to which we have grown so numb.)

    But I am where I always hope to be this time of year: In the mountains that I love.

    When I hike above treeline onto the great expanse of the high tundra my soul finds room for expansion. I’m no longer hemmed in by the din from the reactive ideologues. I find time and space to pray and think.

    And as I pray and think, I know this…

    Creation is good. Very good. It bears witness to its Creator, who is good too.

    In our primitive dread we imagine a god who is petulant and hard to please, vindictive and retributive, capricious and cruel. But these are only petty projections born of our own fear.

    The mystics (and maybe the mountaineers) know better.

    When I can clear my head, I know better. High on the tundra between Longs Peak and the Never Summer Mountains I know the greatest of all truth: God is Love.
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    6 Comments / Jesus, Kingdom, Nonviolence, Peace, Violence, War /

  • August 13, 2007

    The Greatest Thing Of All

    Just a few hours after posting my Blog on Blog blog, where I mentioned that I probably won’t be blogging quite as much for the mentioned reason, here I am posting a…blog. Well, it’s like this, I was working on some thoughts for our staff chapel service tomorrow and I thought I might as well blog it. Might as well.

    Question: What’s the greatest thing of all?

    I’ll give you a moment to think about it.
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    No Comments / Christianity, Music, Theology /