3rd Tuesday of Lent (Mar 17) “God proves his love”

the whole worldPrepare to Listen.  Before reading, be still then pray: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
 
Prayerfully Read Romans 5:6-11
6For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  7Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.  8But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  9Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.  10For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.  11But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
 
Prayerfully Wonder
One of the toughest issues to deal with is grasping that God loves us when things are going terribly wrong for us or those we love; when major natural disasters destroy people and nature; the whole world in a pandemic; when nations engage in wars that affect their own people regardless of age or gender.  This isn’t evidence that God loves us and the world, we often think.  Perhaps we’ve been looking for the wrong evidence for God’s love.  In these verses Paul spells out the proof we need of God’s love: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”  It’s all about what God did that we so patently didn’t deserve.  We were sinners and enemies of God, opposed to God and God’s ways.  Yet, despite that, God chose to send his most costly possession, his Son, to die so that we could be reconciled to God and experience life, now and forever.  The costlier the gift, the more undeserving the recipient, the greater the love.  God’s love is the greatest and is, therefore utterly unique.
 
Prayerfully Reflect
Reflect on what caught your attention and made you pause and think.  Then, go out and rejoice in God’s love for you today.
 
Respond to Jesus
Sometimes Lord, all that I can do is thank you.  Thank you, thank you for proving your love for me.  May I trust your love and rejoice in it today even as we all experience the fallout from the coronavirus.  You are here with us in this crisis.  Thank you.  Amen.
 
Go live obediently in the world that God reconciled to himself.