Wondering why God loves really began for me with question "Why love?"  I would always question the motive for love, basically because almost all relational experience I had pointed to love requiring a cost. 

Relationships with coworkers are really dependent upon performance, so I have no troubles in this arena.  Romantically...well, all those seemed to require sex, and without explanation, that cost hasn't worked for me.  I never could never understand what payment friendship enacts, however, so I essentially alienate myself, thinking that, like a decent romantic relationship, a person couldn't possibly like me for just me, right? 

So I acquire pets.  Instant, albeit forced, companionship.  Though even there, I honestly don't believe my pets "love" me.  Too many times, I'd make a comment about Keeg or one of the dogs fawning over me, and my Mom would reply, "It's because he loves you."  And of course I don't believe that; animals don't love.  They know I feed them, give them a place to live, or as in the case of my ferret and cat, am the only person they ever see. 

I used to have these long, onesided arguments as to the basis of love, and I had gotten it down very indisputably to instinct.  This essentially means that love has to have a reason why and reason for.  And that abolishes the supposed existence of love by completely replacing it with motivational instinct.   I had nearly had this hypothesis destroyed when I considered my parents.  Of course they loved me.  All my life they have done a dozen things or a dozen other which proved it and they get nothing in return. 

Yet one huge thing that science teaches is that it would be and indeed is an advantageous trait for parents to love their children, especially the slowly maturing Homo sapien individuals...and thus I landed back onto instinct.  And instict in turn gives reason for marriage...so love doesn't even find its reality there.

But then comes the case of God, which is where my theory falls apart.  Though instinct and self-seeking motivations may provide explanation for "love" in all other creations, it doesn't in God.  And if I can't understand why God might love, then can't accept that love, I'll never believe or accept "love" from anywhere else. 

I was in a rush to get to church this morning, so much so that I nearly poured boiling water over my freshly ground beans without having installed the mug below the filter.  It would have been almost sacrilege...that aromatic, amber brew spreading out over my stove.

Coffee for me is as near to Jesus as any inanimate object can be.  Certainly I don't worship it, but many times I have very appreciatively praised God for creating the coffee tree, and nothing unimportant aggravates me more than waste, spillage, or mistreatment of the drink.

I averted the near mess, yet, with a shudder, envisioned one of my few luxuries spreading across the stovetop and seeping beneath the burners.  Then another thought struck me, not a mental image, but a spiritual one: How much of what God gives his children finds no vessel to pour into?

Three times in the past week, I've heard or read this idea, that we've all the promises of goodness and blessing, of spiritual gifts and understanding, but that we have to receive them into our lives.  When reading Paul's letters, the history Luke recorded, the examples of men like Peter and Moses, one can see that these men received those gifts from God and utilized them in their ministry for God. 

So what is it that makes me different from them?  Why am I not as productive and why am I so satisfied with being lazy?  And beyond myself: if all Christians were able to receive the gifts of God the way that a handful throughout history have...   Well, it's too easy to imagine how different this world would be.

Christ was innocent of sin, and yet for our sake God made him one with the sinfulness of men, so that in him we might be made one with the goodness of God himself.  Sharing in God's work, we urge this appeal upon you: you have received the grace of God; do not let it go for nothing.  2 Corinthians 5:21 -6:1, NEB

My last post generated a comment that started me thinking.  BibleRapture reminded me of this verse, something Jesus said to his disciples during the Last Supper: "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."  Doesn't it make sense that with the Holy Spirit in us, we also can do the Lord's work?  Perhaps this is what is meant by the immediately proceeding, "and I will do anything that is asked for in my Name."  If moved by the Spirit to do the Father's work, doesn't it make sense that the work would get done?

If I dared say, however, that we Followers of Christ can do even greater things than Jesus, I believe some would consider it blasphemous.  That our works can be greater than Jesus'...how dare I say such a thing?! 

But Jesus said it first, and his predecessors proved it. 

Consider the Apostle Paul.  He traveled further geographically than Jesus.  He planted more churches than Jesus' one, and wrote letters that would become the Bible...things Jesus didn't physically do. Consider also the countless missionaries who crossed oceans with the Gospel, men like St. Patrick and lesser known Samuel Adjai Crowther: a converted, would-be slave who returned to his native Africa with the message of Jesus.  And, of course, the many Christians instrumental in abolishing slavery during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, another thing Jesus didn't do in his life.  Even Constantine, whether moved politically or genuinely by the Holy Spirit, legalized Christianity...something Jesus certainly hadn't done in his flesh. 

I don't say any of this to diminish the work of Jesus...not at all!  I say it to help show that Jesus knew what he was saying to the disciples the night he was arrested, that it was "good for him to go," because until he went to the Father, the Counselor...the indwelling Holy Spirit...couldn't come.  And I believe that the Spirit, working through all Christians, has done and can do more in this world than Jesus could restricted as he was in his single body.