The Love That
God Gives
The love that
God gives,
sharing with
us liberally,
is firstly,
peaceable.
Receiving
with our arms and hearts
opening,
receiving
this peace with God
making peace
with others
as God
forgives us,
we also
forgive
one and all.
The love that
God gives
with the
wisdom of peace
goes beyond
wise
to the place
of foolishness,
by any
worldly wisdom standards.
Calling forth
a joy,
his
extravagant generosity
assaults our
standards
of justice
and fair play.
The love that
God gives
is
consistently over-generous
fully
forgiving,
running over
with grace
magnanimously
cancelling debt
taking in the
stray.
Calling us to
lay down our loads
and to begin
building
a life placed
in his hands
in the centre
of his love.
"There
is no reason for being wary, scrupulous, cautious or afraid with this God" (Brennan
Manning...thinking through God's Word...plus Manning's "The Relentless
Tenderness of Jesus")
-- David Hayward
Brennan Manning (Richard Francis Xavier Manning) fought in the Korean War as an American marine, then enrolled at St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and was ordained a Franciscan priest in 1963. Late in the decade he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld, a religious institute committed to an uncloistered, contemplative life among the poor. In that capacity he transported water via donkey, worked as a mason's assistant and a dishwasher in France, was imprisoned in Switzerland, and spent six months in a remote cave in the Zaragoza desert. In the 1970s, after confronting hios alcoholism, he returned to the US and began writing. His most successful book was 1990's "The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out," about the essence of Christianity; he claimed that the true meaning of God's grace has been lost in a society that is obsessed with merely trying to please God as though he were a "small minded book keeper" who keeps a ledger of sins to use against humanity. Rich Mullins named his group A Ragamuffin Band in tribute to the book.
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