Lord of My Life

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that all who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world but that the world might be saved through him.

John 3: 16-17

Ever since God first called humans into being and placed them on the earth, he has tried to communicate to us why he put us here, how we should live on earth, and what will become of us after we pass from this life. His message to us has always been the same, and it has never been hard to understand. He created us for love. He put us here to teach us how to love. The time we spend on earth has no other purpose than to grow in love. And when our time here is over, we will be called home to our Father's house to abide with him in love forever.

God has communicated this same message to humans in every time and place. He has sent prophets and teachers, saints and seers, holy men and women to every people in every age. They have presented his message in different languages and cultures and traditions, and their hearers listened to it and interpreted it in various ways, but the message has always been the same. It is God's timeless and enduring truth: he created us for love, and to grow ever closer to God in love is the only purpose for our existence.

We could hardly ask for a better truth than this. Yet human history is a sad chronicle of man's continual rejection of God's message of love. Time after time God has looked upon his children on earth, and seeing us alienated from one another, lonely, torn by strife, lost and discouraged, he has sent his messengers to refresh our weary souls and restore our hope. Through them he has offered his covenant of love again and again. But although a few have heeded their words, most have rejected them.

Man's response to the timeless message of love has always been that God's offer is not good enough. It is too risky to trust God. Love is not enough. We live in a cold and hostile world, and the only way to survive is to look out for ourselves. We must protect ourselves. We must provide for our own security. We must achieve our own prosperity. The things we need for our well-being are scarce. We must compete for them. There is not enough for everyone. Every other person is a threat to me. Love makes me vulnerable. It is the greatest risk to my survival.

It is hard to imagine how we could reject God's simple truth about his love and instead create a world filled with all the misery we see around us. Yet we do, just as others have done before us. In our efforts to ensure our survival, we miss the whole purpose for which we were created. We stake out what we think is a safe and secure place in this world, but we fail to ensure our place in the world to come. We gain all we can in this world, but in doing so we risk losing eternal life.

But God loves us too much to leave us in this predicament. God loves us so much that, when he could no longer bear to see us lost in darkness and despair, he sent his beloved Son into the world to save us. God himself became man, he embodied his love in human form, to communicate his message of love in a way that everyone could understand, in a way that could not be mistaken. Jesus came into the world bearing God's final offer of love. He is God's final answer to the meaning of human life.

Jesus' message to the world is that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life. He showed by his own life that God's love is all we really need, that God can in fact be trusted, that God's love overcomes everything we fear, even death.

All we have to do is believe in him. But what does it mean to believe in Jesus? It does not mean merely to invoke his name, or join a following, or accept a set of doctrines. Important as these may be, they will not lead to eternal life. To believe in Jesus means to be reborn in his Spirit, to become a new person, to view the world in an entirely new way. It means to become his disciple, to no longer live for myself, or worry about my needs, or pursue my own interests, but to make him the Lord of my life. To believe in him means to acknowledge that love is worth the risk, in fact it is worth risking everything for, because it is the only way to become fully human, to realize the purpose for which we were created, and to enter eternal life.


Read a Prayer of the Beloved.