Faith Expressed Through Love

⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. -Galatians 5:6


I love Christ's Church.  It is the believers gathered in faith to worship God, encourage one another in our Christian walk, study the scriptures and learn how to apply it to our daily lives and reach out to others who don't yet know of God's saving love.  But like any other institution run by man, it is imperfect and in our quest to make it perfect we corrupt it even more.


We humans seem to have a need for black and white rules.  You either must be circumcised or not.  You either must be baptized as an infant or you must wait until some arbitrarily selected age.  You must gather to worship on Sunday or you must gather to worship on Saturday.


Rules are important, especially in the light of seeing how far we fall from being able to keep them all.  But they are not black and white.  We are all individuals and our actions and beliefs need to be judged on an individual basis that looks at our whole experience and genetic make-up and influences.  Only God can judge each of us that perfectly.


What is most important is what St. Paul tells us:  The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.  Our churches each have so much theology, dogma, statements and rules all made by humans.  Much of it is good stuff, but the problem is that because we are all so different, we interpret things differently and all that black and white becomes so gray.  So we argue, blame and judge one another.


If we simply focus on the one thing that counts... faith expressing itself through love, we will find that all that other stuff will simply take care of itself.  We don't judge others so harshly when we are focused on just loving them.


Lord, 
Help us to love you and one another above all else.  Amen.


Joys:  Fun, fun, fun rally day picnic!; teaching Sunday school to preschoolers; a great weekend.