5 December Mark 10:23-31
‘For God all things are possible’. Nothing is impossible for God. In God’s upside-down kingdom, where first is last and last is first, it is the unlikely and the unworthy who find a welcome, while those who think they can get there by their own achievements, be it wealth or power or possessions, find out that it’s not so much ‘who’ can be saved as ‘how’. And the ‘how’ is by recognising our insufficiency – that we have nothing to offer, that we don’t know the answers, that there is no way we can earn or merit or deserve our place. In other words, that everything depends on God’s love and grace.
As we look at today’s world in all the struggles it faces, with countries at war, with the climate in crisis, with a seemingly unending series of storms and natural disasters devastating the lives of so many, we might justifiably ask the question, ‘Where is God in all this’ – where is love, where is hope, where is that promise of fullness of life? Perhaps one answer is that God is among those who, having lost all, discover communities where faith binds people together – where people offer the kind of love, compassion and support that knows nothing of gain and everything of sacrifice.
For surely it is in the mess of life that the Kingdom of God is to be found, where less is more, where the impossible happens, and camels really do go through needles’ eyes!
Liz Stuart
Loving God,
God of eternal possibilities,
We long for your kingdom to come.
But, in the waiting,
help us to rid ourselves of any false securities we hold onto,
so that we may be open and ready to receive the riches
of new life you alone can give.
Amen.
