Written by Chris Webb, a contemporary Benedictine Anglican priest, author, speaker, and teacher. This is an excerpt from his work “To Bear the Character of God.”
The great twelfth-century Dominican writer Thomas Aquinas … made the startling assertion that love was more than the goal of Christian perfection: it is the fundamental power behind the created order. Just as physicists probe sub-atomic structure to identify the basic forces and particles that make up this physical universe, so Aquinas probed to the depths of Christian theology to identify the driving energy behind creation itself. In the end, Aquinas argued, everything is grounded in love, since all creation reflects the character of the one who made it. He suggested that we are not only made to love, we are made of love. Everything we do is driven by this divine quality: all we can do is love. But Aquinas had no illusions about the terrifying human capacity for sin. He wrote about the lethal power of sin, that “turning away from our last end which is God.” He came to see love as having the kind of awesome power we see in nuclear fusion. Well-ordered and directed to the right ends, love can transform lives, inseparably unite people with one another and God, and act as the harmonious and creative power which holds all creation in being. But misdirected – allowed to turn in on itself, allowed to run wildly on the heels of any and every desire of our misguided hearts – love can become a horrifyingly destructive force, tearing apart the world from under our feet. Love, rightly ordered, will be the foundation of the kingdom of God. But grotesquely disordered love, inordinate self-love which swirls in on itself like a fierce tornado, has the capacity to shape tragedies like Auschwitz or the Rwandan genocide. Sin – love disordered – is horrific. But holiness – love rightly ordered – is life in all its abundance.
Prayer:
Written by Mark D. Roberts, a contemporary author and speaker.
Gracious God, thank you for being a good, good God, a God whose love for us never gives up, never expires, never fails. Thank you for making your love known to us in so many different ways. Your work, Lord, shows us your love. You have made the heavens and the earth for us, filling them with beauty and fruitfulness. You have delivered us from bondage to sin and death, saving us through Jesus Christ. Your steadfast love, O God, endures forever. As I do my work today, may it be an expression of love. Help me, I pray, to love my colleagues, my customers, my students, my neighbors, my family, and my world through my work. Most of all, may my work be a response to your love. May I love you this day as I work for your glory. Amen.
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