It simply has to be the question on every Christian’s lips, but how far has the apple been flung from the tree? And having been re-introduced to the Black Eyed Peas classic, “Where is the Love,” recently, surely upon reflection we must ask ourselves what can I do for you, God?
We might hear God answer us saying, “There isn’t anything you can do for me that I haven’t already done for you,” but I know that God knows what we mean when we say we truly want to help and serve our Lord while we live and breathe on this planet. This recognises God’s call on our lives; that we no longer wish to pillage the planet but wish to use all that we are and everything we have to honour God by making the most of the life we personally inhabit.
Could it just be that once we have accepted there is nothing we can do for God that God hasn’t already done for us in Christ, there is just one more opportunity: Love one another. “as I have loved you,” Jesus famously said, “so you must love one another.” So, where is the love?
It’s so easy in our age of outrage to stomp our feet, find our cause and protest about it, and to become an advocate for one thing or another, demanding what we want, how we want it; but if there is no love, our efforts are futile. We may well build ‘a kingdom’ (i.e. not God’s true Kingdom) in vain.
The only way we can establish whether our advocacy is building upon a firm foundation is if we’re humble enough to reflect on what we, ourselves, can do to improve.
The imperative of love compels us to want what God wants, but we must know that doing God’s bidding in the name of love is never about putting people offside through a spirit of condemnation. Sure, we can call them to reflect, but if we know that they won’t change, why do we keep knocking at their door? We kick the dust off our feet, and we depart respectfully. And yet we can win a friend in disagreement if only we get beyond the issue and down into the intent of the heart; seek to understand anyone and they may soon be our friend, because they recognise our actions as the communicable universal language of love.
When we ask God, “What can I do to you, Lord?” we ask it in any and every conscious situation we find ourselves in.
What can we do in this minute, this second, at the shopping centre, in my workplace, with these cars all around me on the roads, with these customers I serve, with people who are like me and with people who are not like me? And most of all in our homes. How can I be a bridge of unity in propagating the language of kindness, patience, gentleness, and self-control?
How can I do my little bit and be satisfied that I’m in the lap of God’s will?
How can I break my faith down and simply live is a peacemaker, when all doctrinal arguments fade away into insignificance?
The key task of life is to love others. When we begin to get that right, as we sow in peace, through being a joyful presence, we find benefit all around us, and discover that God is intimately in it. Always was. Always will be.
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