Embarrassingly large

       I am possessed to meditate this morning on the state of of being a human being. I have long held that to be fully human will make us fully alive and what God has created us for and called us to be. This is the essence to me of why The Word became flesh, truly flesh and blood and lived among us, one of us in everything. Yet today this passage speaks of not taking the human view.

       I am still convinced as much as ever that we are called to the fullness of humanity. That includes steps and missteps, but also learning and loving. It also includes an embarrassingly large amount of loving. Not a large amount, but an embarrassingly large amount. Why stress that extra word?

        Jesus lived and loved as we did. But If I can use a simple analogy, he wore better glasses than we do. He had better vision. He saw his humanity and embraced it but saw well beyond humanity as well. He saw heaven, He saw eternal life. He saw things we are not capable of understanding or perhaps even seeing as humans. Jesus straddled both, humanity and divinity.

        In our own divinity, or what we are capable of seeing of it, we are made in God's image. We are called to be fully human, but also to see and seek out our divine nature as well. The divine nature is not simply a large amount of loving by God but an embarrassingly large amount. I often refer to this fact, that God loves us with reckless abandon.  More love than we can comprehend as humans.  It is justice that is not human justice. It is forgiveness that far exceeds human forgiveness. It is love that is so great it speaks of a new creation, the Trinity; it speaks to us as new beings, beyond humanity.

       Somewhere in the midst of our humanity, in the depths of pain, in the love, in the sorrow and in our daily living, we catch glimpses of the divinity in us and others and all that surrounds us. Everyone and everything is created in Gods likeness. It is for us to see in the reveling and fulfillment of our own humanity. Being present to ourselves, life and others helps us get into focus the things that we cannot see clearly now but that we are clearly destined for.     

2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2

 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
   and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!