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March 3

God’s All-Encompassing Love

What we think of God often has more to do with what we think of our parents, other authority figures, and of ourselves. But Scripture invites us into the open spaces of God’s all embracing love.

God gets a lot of blame in our contemporary world. God is the cause of religious conflict and bigotry. God causes wars in our world. God is self-interested in the call to worship. God causes people to become dependent. God fails to solve the world’s ongoing problems. The list could go on.

But the Bible gives us quite a different picture of God. This God has made a beautiful world. This God calls unlikely people to do acts of

wisdom and goodness. This God cares about the oppressed. This God blesses an unlikely people to become a light to the world.

And in Jesus Christ this God shows himself to be the God who

identifies with us, enters our struggles and sorrows, and gives his life for the world. This God seeks to make all things well.

Lady Julian of Norwich, the English mystic, talks about the wideness of God’s love. “God is the power and goodness of fatherhood; God is the wisdom and loving kindness of motherhood.”62

This God, beyond human gender, is a God of sovereignty and power and a God of nurture and care. All children and women and men can find a place of safety and refreshment in the love of this God.

Reflection

Embrace God as true mother and father. Be directed by this God. Be

nurtured by this God known in the face of Christ.