Freedom in Lent - Day 35
Many of us live our lives trying to meet the expectations of other people, of the society around us, and even of our selves. We are told our value comes from being productive, being busy, earning well, having a certain level of education, owning a home, car, gadgets, having the latest phone, etc etc. Trying to live up to expectations is exhausting and never-ending.
And yet the message of our Christian faith is that we are loved and valued for who we are, not what we do, or what we have managed to achieve. We are beloved, made in the image of God, valuable, graced and embraced by Divine love. There is nothing we can do which will make God love us more, or less.
Whilst it is entirely right to live our lives by standards of compassion, faithfulness, justice, equity, peace, kindness, and love - when we seek to live up to false expectations, or unrealistic expectations of ourselves, or the judgemental expectations of others, we aren't living into who we are meant to be: beloved, just as we are.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4.16b-19