Rereading Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner took me back to a place of comfort and safety from my childhood. The characters in these stories live in the imagination of young children who are able to use their gifts of creative thinking to suspend reality becoming curious and wondering. The animals always end up helping each other even when there are choices which have unintended consequences. There is flexibility and simplicity to the adventures. In adulthood I often forget these gifts can be used as tools to help access joy. John 3:16 is an explicit statement of the greatest gift, God’s love. A love so great for the world that Jesus came and lived with us to guide and teach us how to access this love. A gift so magnificent that the writer of 1 John 4:15 says, “God remains in us and we remain in God.”
How beautiful and amazing that even when we don’t choose love Divine God keeps on loving us by welcoming us to be in relationship with God. One simple commandment is offered in the passage from 1 John 4, to love God and love our human siblings. I wish I could understand why this foundation of Christianity can be so difficult to embrace and live. There continues to be an ongoing stream of news stories reminding viewers how terrible people are to one another. How violence impacts people. Violence that is climate change weather related. Violence where individuals are harmed and not believed. Violence of families being separated. Violence that includes weapons and destruction. Violence that strips dignity and respect by dehumanizing individuals. A constant focus on harm. Yet, this is not what Divine God desires for us. Instead, we are called to love. Called to demonstrate love by mirroring it back to the rest of Divine God’s beloveds.
When we focus on being intentional about sharing our gifts on Sunday mornings, we are also sharing the choices we make throughout the rest of the week. Stewardship is not only about giving 10 percent of one’s earnings. Stewardship is lived in all of our actions. It is showing those around us how we understand what it means to be love in a hurting world. Later we will make our commitments together for the coming year to be intentional about these gifts when we bring our commitment cards forward to be blessed along with the rest of what we will share this morning as our offerings. We will expand on this commitment by participating in Holy Communion where we choose to accept Divine God’s grace and embrace being united with Jesus Christ and one another. This is also the time to recognize where our growing edges are and how we can be better bearers of love.
Remember that hug we gave ourselves earlier? Use this practice as a way to validate yourself. May this activity be a simple reminder that to feel love we can take a pause or few steps backwards to allow joy to radiate from those we love. And those we love include all of our human siblings and the whole of creation. It is my hope that from this day forward you remember what Pooh said. And to imagine that this same blessing comes from Divine God. “Any day spent with you is my favorite day. So today is my new favorite day,” because it is definitely what Divine God believes about each of us.
Divine God, you are everlasting love. You have invited us to spend our days with you and sometimes we forget about your invitation. Help us to embrace each day as a new favorite day with your favorite people which includes those we struggle to love. Thank you for your patience and grace as we strive to be our best selves. Learning is sometimes challenging but if we practice and stick with it, we know any behavior can be changed. Just as Christ Jesus transformed may we too be transformed in your love. May it be so. Amen.
