February Pastor’s letter

One of my favorite camp songs is “Rolling Over the Meadows.” That’s the chorus. The verses start with, “It’s mice, it’s mice, it’s mice that make the cats go round.” Each verse progresses with another creature that gets set going round by the previous creature. The second verse is “cats that make the dogs go round.” The verses progress through boys, girls, and finally, love – “It’s love that makes the world go round.”

Every day is an opportunity to experience love. Whether it be through family relationships, friends, or the kindness of strangers, every day brings us opportunities and experiences of love. We give love and we receive love. Either way provides pleasant emotions for us. Love is what makes our world go round and since the experience is universal, love is what makes the universe go round.

Love is very basic to our being.  It doesn’t depend on our intellect or our thought processes at all.  In fact, when pressed to locate it in our bodies, we locate it in our hearts. February is the month of love – hearts abound in grocery stores and retail outlets as retailers gear up to once again profit off love during the month of Valentine’s Day. Nothing wrong with that. I’d rather see consumers motivated by hearts than by guns or some other implement of evil.

But, one can’t talk about love without talking about heartache. When a loved one dies or gets somehow separated from us, we experience heartache. That pain can make us question the goodness of love. It can make us question the existence of God.

Somehow love and God get all tangled up together. We hope that God can resolve our heartache. That’s a very personal hope and I encourage you to trust the promises of God. Love is undeniably real, though its realness must include its ability to break our hearts. It is not something we control. It has an existence separate from our ability to control it.

What God promises us is a resolution of our heartbreak. God promises us that on the other side of this life is a life that resolves the heartache. “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more; for the former things have passed away.” (Revelations 21:4)

And yet we can be unsure of this ability of love to redeem itself.  But, if love were unable to redeem itself, we would be pitiful creatures who can only experience life in a very broken condition. We can take pride only in a perverse ability to accept our fate.  And that speaks poorly of love.  If love is the ultimate force in the universe, then love has the power to resolve the heartache it can cause. The promises of God are the promise of love. Love is God. God is love. (1 John 4:7)                                                                    Peace…. Pastor Dale