Love/Hate - Pastor's Pen for 23rd August

© Maham Sajid

You may well have watched the movie Monsters Inc. with your children or grandchildren. The main premise of the movie is that an entire society has been built around a false assumption about what makes people afraid. The monsters' world depends on the screams of human children. The monsters enter children's bedrooms through doors, frighten them, and collect their screams as an energy source. The critical discovery occurs when the child Boo inadvertently enters the monsters' world, eventually showing them that laughter is more powerful than screaming. Joy overcomes fear.

You may well have read the Bible, in which we come to understand the story of God expressed in Old and New Testaments. These gathered accounts span from the late Bronze Age into the Iron Age, and document the activity of God among people learning to discern God's ways among the myriad gods of the ancient Near East. Societies were warlike and competed in ways typical of the times, with the sporadic and brutal violence of tribal and military domination.

From the Israelite society dominated by Rome, emerged messiah Jesus, as foretold by the Hebrew prophets, who proclaimed a new revelation and covenant of love, to supersede the old ways of domination and violence. Even though human beings are slow learners, followers of Jesus are still called to this way of love. Hear the gospel of Christ;

"You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.  I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you." (John 15: 16-18)

Let us then choose joy over fear and love over hate. Shalom