God is where love is for love is of God

Jane Denniston October 19, 2024 7 6

Playlists

Add to Favourites

Save for later

Listen to this daily worship

Psalm 67: 7 (NRSVA)

7 

May God continue to bless us;
    let all the ends of the earth revere him.

Although there are those in today’s society who would call themselves atheists, throughout history, and until recently, every race, nation, and culture has had some understanding of something beyond, bigger, a spiritual aspect to life. Communism has bucked this trend, but even in Communist countries there are many (perhaps even a majority) who keep belief in a god, or God. 

The theologian Karl Rahner had a controversial theory about ‘anonymous Christians’ (a theory which C.S. Lewis used to good effect in his children’s book ‘The Last Battle’). He believed that every human being had an implicit disposition to believe in God, whether they recognised it or not, and our sense of right and wrong, our intrinsic morality or capability of altruism was a sign of this. 

For humanity is made in God’s image — even those who would reject him — and the divine spark gives life to every human being, enabling us to live and to love. Love is of God, and when we love, that divine spark in us lights up. 

In a sense then, the whole earth, whether they know it or not, lives in the presence of God and reveres God when they love. Like the Athenians Paul meets in Acts 17, for many people God is unknown (verse 23). Our mission then, is to make him known. To enlighten the world to the divine within them, in whom we ‘live and move, and have our being’ (Acts 17: 28). 

Prayer:

Omnipresent God,

may we recognise your divine spark in everyone we meet, 

however unlikely it may seem to us. 

May the eyes of their hearts be enlightened through us

that they may come to know and to understand

the love of God which gives them life, Amen.