Lenten reflection for March 22

Our church does a Lenten meditation booklet written by members and I wrote the meditation for March 22. The readings are: Psalm 119:97-120 * Psalm 81, 82, Genesis 45:16-28; I Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 6:13-29.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge. But anyone who loves God is known by God.
I Corinthians 8:1b-3

God is so much more than our human knowledge can take in. We don't even have the words that could describe God. There is more to God than we can know, even more than we can imagine. We can't figure out by our knowledge alone what God would want us to do. We can't know God's intention for the terrible situations human beings get themselves into.

But what we do have is love. When we love and are loved we experience what God is, even though we can't capture the core of that experience in words. Woven through this universe of matter and energy is a universe of love. Loving God is the closest we can come to knowing God.

We are always known by God. The Bible tells us so many times that God knows everything about us: the hairs on our head, who we were in our mother's wombs. So I like to think that the statement that "anyone who loves God is known by God" means that if we love God, then we experience God knowing us in a still deeper way. The more we love God, the more we are aware of God inside us, of God woven through our bodies and minds. When we love and are loved, we experience God knowing us and loving us and loving the world through us. We can find hope and courage in that even in situations we cannot understand.