May 4, 2026:

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame….[until]

But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?‘ Adam answered, ‘I heard You in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’”

(Genesis 2.25; Genesis 3.9-10)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Milton called it “Paradise Lost.” The escalation of insurrection in Heaven was carried out on earth as Satan in rebellion turned his cunning wrath on God through Adam and Eve. The lesson we learn in the season of the “eighth day” is that regardless of the rebellion in the spiritual realm or on earth, God’s love triumphs over all. This is the glory of God in that His love endures forever. Others in the world seek to discern beginnings and endings. Their theories, proposals, science and theologies are time bound even when they speak of eternity. This is what separates God and faith in God from all others. God and His love “is, was and will always be.” They have no beginning and no ending. In the presence of God’s love all sense of time is lost. Eventually there is no search for a beginning because all we find is love. There is love in its creativity for new life, new expressions of the impact of love on others and the pursuit of sharing mercy and grace to bring about reconciliation. This is the essence and character of love. The description of it is simply. The expression of it is complex. You know when there is true love when the priority of another and others to receive it is greater than your own. Is there little wonder when God describes righteousness in the giving of the Ten Commandments it bears witness to such prioritizing? Those Ten Commandments are built upon two great truths which define authentic faithfulness to the power of life and love. Jesus calls them the Great Commandments: love God with everything you are and extend such favor to the neighbor in your land. I invite you to look again at those Ten Commandments. They are the view of humanity toward God; expressions of humanity’s true love for God and for one another. They are the calling out of love’s pure aim to honor the other more than one’s self. In each descriptor the cause and effect becomes clear. In them we see ourselves as we are, as we have become and also as we can determine ourselves to be not on our own but in the presence of God.

This Satan refuses to do. Satan is not love. He is the absence of true love. He is not the antithesis of love because he is not apathetic. Hate is not the true opposite of love. Hate is an deep expression just as love is. And while it works in the opposite direction than love, it is not the opposite of love because it’s existence hinges upon love. Without love, as the Apostle Paul wrote so eloquently, there is nothing at all. Another way of looking at his descriptors allows us to see what was before God’s love came into the chaos and void and null existence. The opposite of love is apathy. It feels nothing at all. It doesn’t love (or hate), it just existence. It becomes an enabler and purveyor of nothingness, of chaos, meaninglessness, purposelessness. It is the instigator of death. And what feels like passion, emotional renderings and even faith in something other than love so that hating of that which calls us into being appears to exist, is just a lie. Apathy is born in such hate but it exceeds it a billion times over. Apathy is the great nothingness. It is the father of “I don’t really care.” It is the place and the season where life no long matters: yours, ours, theirs. It is just the moment of existing without connecting. It is the place of entitlement and allowance to “live and let live, just leave me alone.” Can such emptiness exist? Can there be a place where there is no love? The answer in the Bible is “no.” But, there can be competition and vying for position as to what kind of love there is. That is the place where we find righteousness and unrighteousness at war in Heaven and on earth and in earth (that means in us!” Satan is the proposer of hate. He dare not support the nothing because He would lose all he intends. To feel nothing is not what fuels Satan. To feel the power of being loved as the only is! And this is the essence of the “eighth day.” It is the debate and contemplation of “Is God’s love real?” That is what lies behind the question that changed Adam and Eve from “they felt no shame” to “they feared the naked truth.” They didn’t feel nothing. They were not apathetic. They felt something. They felt for the first time as “other.” They were not called out and lifted up and treasured and blessed. They were “cast out and forbidden and cursed.” They felt for the first time what it was to be without God. It didn’t mean that they didn’t know God, sense His presence or consider the right and wrongs of life and living as God had defined it all. It meant that they felt the chasm fixed between God and humanity.

But, love finds a way….

TODAY’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.