Unconditional love is a love that is too busy pouring itself out on the world to wonder whether enough love comes back to it to be worth the effort. Unconditional loving is its own reward. It’s a vibrant way of being alive in the world, not a grim Christian obligation.
What makes plans holy? I believe they are plans conceived and bathed in prayer, with little pockets of air dispersed throughout them to give room for the blowing breath of the Holy Spirit.
If you’re looking for holy scriptures that present a single, unadulterated, and righteous perspective, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere than the Bible of Christians and Jews. But I’ve come to believe that these contradictions are not flaws. They are features. They are essential to how scripture goes to work on our common life over time.
When Christ promises that he comes to bring us life in abundance, that promise is not lopsided. He comes to open our eyes to the world and its deep need, to our neighbors and their pain, to the abundance of work that must be done for justice. And he comes to show us how to dance, how to look up and see the beauty of this amazing world, to remind us to gather with friends around a table and tell stories and laugh until we cry.
Jesus wants to become fully immersed in our lives. By waiting in line, he honors the norm of the community – the community in which he wants to be fully enmeshed. He wants to be an abiding presence and a change agent within us. He wants to be a companion, waiting in line with the rest of us.