How God is Relates through Covenant

In the church where I spent a large part of my childhood, it was common to hear that God wants us to have a personal relationship with him. By this, we meant that each person has the opportunity to a direct relationship with God, which meant that we did not need the church or a priest to serve as a go-between. We could go to God directly in a one-on-one way. Our talk about “relating” focused on how we related to God, not about how God related to us. 

In the previous post, I wrote about the fact that God is not idea that is hidden, but that God in Jesus came out of hiding so that we could see him. God related to us. But this leads me to ask: What kind of relationship does he have with us? It was clear to me how I was supposed to relate to God when I was growing up in the church, but it was not very clear how God engages us. It was just not something we talked about. 

I was puzzled by this fact in my first class on the Old Testament. I was 22 and I thought I had a pretty good understanding of God and what God wanted. Then the professor told the stories of the encounters between God and Abraham. It became clear that God was the one who approached Abraham and called him to a different path. God was the one who said that he would become the father of many, when he had no children. God was the one who said that he would have a son through his wife Sarah who was then over 70 years old. God initiated. God promised. And then God acted. Abraham and Sarah actually had a son in their old age and that son had children and then there resulted a nation of Israel. I distinctly remember my response. I asked, Why don’t we hear more sermons about this kind of God?  Why are we so focused on what we do to be in a personal relationship with God when there is so much focus on what God does in these stories? It did not take me long to set these questions aside because I was so steeped in the mindset of focusing on what I was supposed to do. It has taken me a very long time to actually understand the radical nature of these encounters between God and Abraham. 

Through the years, I’ve discovered that we often come to the Bible with a perspective that does not fit the way that the perspective of the Bible. We project our preconceptions and thereby miss the point. The Bible uses the word covenant to define the way that God is relates to us. I am not overstating the case to say that we cannot understand who God is and how God relates to us unless we view God as a covenant keeper.

However, there are three challenges that hinder our ability to see the way that God comes to us. First, covenants are not a significant part of modern culture, as they were during the various eras that the Bible was written. Therefore, most of us do not have any knowledge about how covenants work. Second, our common experience of relationships are formed by contractual interactions. We just don’t have much experience with someone relating to others through a covenantal mindset. Third, in the church setting, the use of the word covenant has actually been used in ways that do not represent what the Bible actually intends. 

The remainder of this post addresses the first of these three challenges as it introduces what a covenant is. Subsequent posts will deal with the second and third.

One scholar who studied the history of ancient Hebrew covenants defined a covenant in this way: “An agreement enacted between two parties in which one or both make promises under oath to perform or refrain from certain actions stipulated in advance.” (ABD, 1:1179) In simpler terms, a covenant is a promise made by at least one person to act in a specific way for the sake of the other person or persons. For instance, two land owners might enter into covenant defining how they will use a river that runs between their properties. They commit to use the water in a way that will not harm the other. Or two kings might set up a covenant by promising not to harm the other, even if circumstances call for it. 

The Old Testament is stuffed with covenantal language, especially when God engages humans. The Old Testament is structured around five major covenant where God promised to act in a specific way with a covenant partner.  They are the creation covenant, Noahic covenant, Abrahamic covenant (mentioned above), Mosaic/Sinai covenant, and the Davidic covenant. In each of these, we see God personally making promises of what he will or will not do, and there is no opt out once the covenant is made. It is a declaration of how God will act for the sake of the covenant partner. 

Some of these covenants are unilateral or one-sided. In other words, the promise does not depend upon anyone but God in order for God to uphold it. God is the only one making the promise, and God is the only one acting. God says what he is going to do and there are no conditions on whether or not it will come about. (We see this in God’s covenant with Noah when he promised never to flood the earth again and with Abraham when he promised to make him the father of many nations.) Other promises are bi-lateral or mutual. God says what he will do, yet the complete realization or reception of that promise depends upon others respond to what God has promised. This is indicative of the covenant made with Moses and the people of Israel on Sinai. 

Think of it this way: A covenantal God relates to us by making promises of what he will do and being faithful to keeping those promises. The entire Bible is shaped by this pre-understanding of how God relates. It’s like the atmosphere of heaven. It’s the air that God breathes, which means that God connects with others by marking promises and keeping them. It’s just what it means for God to be God. 

God Comes Out of Hiding

"The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." —John 1:14

The stories of the Bible speak of a God who is inherently relational, not as a divine entity who sits in heaven at a distance. He is not hiding behind a wall, withholding secrets about his identity that only a special few can fathom. This begins in the very first stories with Adam and Eve, where we learned that God walked with them in the Garden. Then God approached them  after they ate off the tree, even though God said that it was off limits. God did not wait for Adam and Eve to ascend to a religious place and come to a special set apart zone where the divine nature resides. God came to them in their normal spaces of life. God related.

This relational connectivity is demonstrated in story after story. God speaks, loves, gets frustrated, responds, and leads. These are all things that we do in our relationships on a day-to-day basis. The creation story says that God made us in the image of the divine nature. Of course, this does not mean that we are not all ultimate beings like God is the ultimate power of the universe. It means that we are made in the image of divine relationality. We are made to relate, to share life with God and others. This is what lies at the core of what it means to be alive. 

Seeing God as inherently relational can prove to be challenging. We have a long tradition in the church of seeing God as anything but that. When I was in college, I went to Germany and visited the Mainz Cathedral, which is over 1000 years old. 

As I walked through this space that was meant to point people to God, my eyes were drawn to statues of former religious leaders who had stern faces turned down upon those of use who walked the nave and eyes that pierced with spiritual seriousness. I walked away feeling judged and and distant from God.  This was designed to be a place that communicated that God was far from us and that the common person could not experience secrets of God’s life. Only the select few had that privilege. The last thing that I felt was that God was drawing me into relationship. 

Instead of seeing God as relational, we tend to view him as operating through rules. God sits in a secret place in heaven and then disperses commands that he expects us to follow in order to life the kind of life that he wants. Do this. Don’t do that. And then we are left to ourselves to make sure that we get that done. 

Different traditions emphasize different commands, and usually these traditions enjoy criticizing each other because no one else gets it right. Everyone believes that they have the secret insight to God. As a result, we try to connect to God by following the right rules. After all God is inaccessible to us because he is hiding behind a wall. The problem is that this image of God leaves us on our own to try and figure out how to relate to him. It’s the pursuit of a carrot that we can never catch. God is always beyond our reach and it seems that religious people keep changing the rules. 

In the stories of the Bible, God is always the one who initiates relationship. As I wrote in this post, God is the protagonist in the grand drama. God creates. God calls Abraham. God listens to the cry of the Israelite slaves. God sends Moses. God delivers the Israelites from Egypt. God leads them through the wilderness. The action of the story is all about what God does. God wants relationship with Israel just like God wanted relationship with Adam and Eve, walking with them in the cool of the evening. He brought them out of Egypt to show them that they could engage him in this way. 

Ultimately, this relational way of being is manifest in the life of Jesus. The book of John opens by saying that “the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The “word” is a Greek way of saying the nature of the eternal being. One translator put it this way:

The Word became flesh and blood,

    and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes,

    the one-of-a-kind glory,

    like Father, like Son,

Generous inside and out,

    true from start to finish.

God came out of hiding and became one of us in our space and time and showed us what God looks like. God demonstrated that the ultimate being of the universe does not hide behind a wall, requiring us to live up to some kind of mysterious standard that we cannot fully know. Instead, he comes and relates in love, inviting us to engage in this kind of love. .

Thinking about What You Think Abou

“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” —Philippians 4:8

A good life grows out of good input.

Our brains are remarkable. That little organ has been designed to constantly receive and process data, even when we are not trying to do so. Of course, we think about the fact that our brains taking in information when we are reading a book or sitting in a class while the teacher gives a lecture. This is a form of active learning where we intentionally engage our brains to learn something new. But there is also something that we might call passive learning.

Passive learning occurs perpetually. It’s on auto-pilot and there is no off button. Most of the time we don’t even know what we are learning as we are learning it. It just happens as we go through the day. The most obvious example of this happens when we grow up in a family and we learn to speak. It’s not like taking a Spanish class. We learn to talk as we associate words with actions and objects. We never question the weird and complex structure of the English language. It is just the way it is. 

We experience passive learning in all kinds of ways. One of the most common is through our interaction with friends (and enemies). We hear and see things from others that influence us. Some trustworthy, many are not. If we consider someone a friend, what they think and say matters, and we will often believe them because we want our relationship to be sound, even if what they say or do might look off. 

Passive learning also occurs as we engage social media, stream a show, or listen to music. We might be able to say that we don’t actually believe what we are taking in—and we very well might be able to differentiate—but there is no way that what we are taking in does not affect us. I say that because everything that we take in affects the way that our brain works. Years ago, I would listen to a radio talk show host who ranted and raved about his sports opinions. I found myself stressed out after listening to him, even though I agreed with much of what he said. His tone was passively affecting men, whether I wanted it to or not. 

Another form of passive learning comes with daily experience. Trauma can cause us to react in ways that stress us out, even if it does not make sense. A good experience can result in a shot of dopamine, again, even if no one else can understand why it results in joy. If you have a boring history teacher, you might be bored by anything related to history for the rest of your life. But if you had an interesting math teacher, you might find the subject enlightening, even if you don’t have a propensity toward doing math well. I’m actually writing this today because I am thinking about how the busyness of my work during the Christmas season is impacting the way I think. I found myself easily frustrated by people at work that usually don’t frustrate me. The experience of busyness was overloading my brain, even though I was trying to keep it from doing so. I did not even realize what was going on and that I just needed some time to take a breath.

The world throws data at us, far more information than we can consciously process. One of the things that keeps us from finding freedom is this inundation of useless information and unnecessary activities that control us because our brains take in them in passively. Some of it is benign and fun. I admit that. But think of it this way: if your brains are a garden and it is full of the input of weeds, then it will never grow the fruit of freedom. It takes work to remove the weeds and keep them out. 

If you want to live a great life, you will have to guard the input into your brain. You cannot control everything because we ugly experiences happen that are beyond our direct influence. However, the more we allow things that are beautiful, true, and good to enter our minds, the more the gardens of our minds will be free to produce a life that is beautiful, true, and good. 

Learning to Pivot

To walk the journey of life well, you must learn to pivot.

The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.—Proverbs 16:9

As we walk through life, we will face twists and turns, along with roadblocks and barriers. When I was in my twenties, I traveled from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on a train as a part of group visiting some house churches who were meeting illegally. I was traveling with a British citizen of Hong Kong (this was when it was still a British territory). He had been arrested, tied up, and beaten for practicing his faith. When his British passport fell out of his pocket, and Chinese police let him go. To say the least, this experience was not something he had put in his planner. In fact, it messed up a significant list of things that he was aiming to do. 

This is a rather extreme example, but, nonetheless, it does illustrate that life never works as we plan. That does not make planning unimportant. In fact, having a plan for the steps you will take is helpful. Some are good planners, while others prefer to prioritize spontaneity. However, everyone has some idea of how they want the path to go. But life is not in the plan. Life is lived in the unpredictable realities that we face as we step out in our plan. 

Most of the things that we meet on the path are not as extreme as getting arrested for meeting in a house to talk about God and faith. Sometimes, it’s a hope that gets dashed, a friend that let you down, or job that is not panning out as hoped. The path is always  moving in directions that we don’t understand because no one has ever mapped out the path that you are on. We are always creating a path as we walk it.

When we were traveling back to Honk Kong, our train suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere. After about thirty minutes we learned that a landslide had covered the tracks ahead with rocks, and it would not be cleared for a few days. We got off and walked to a nearby road and the person leading our trip was able to find a person who was willing to drive us to Hong Kong. We had made our plans, but we had to pivot in order to get to our destination. 

When we face situations on the journey that don’t work out as planned, we tend to respond in one of three ways. First, we get caught up in the pressures of the moment. We are so focused on what is coming at us and what we have to get done, we end up hitting our heads against a wall repeatedly, not realizing that we need to rethink the next steps. As a result, we end up doing the same thing to attack the same problem, expecting different results. Albert Einstein famously called this common action insanity. 

The second typical response is to enter into a place of regret, to analyze how the plan we made on the path we chose did not work out. Regret traps us in the past and keeps us from seeing seeing the roadblock for what it is, a regular life experience that will be a part of any plan we make. 

A third response is to scuttle the current plan in totality because any trouble we face must mean that it was not the right plan in the first place. The expectation is that if a path is right for someone then it will work out as planned. This option mires us in the world of dreams and actually strips away our ability to keep walking. 

All three of these options fail to deal with reality. The first option ignores reality. Options two and three are forms of escaping reality, either through regret or delusion. The only way forward that fits the reality of any path we take is to pivot. This, I believe, is what it means when it says, “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.” It’s not that our plans are irrelevant. Nor does this mean that God controls every step we take. Instead, it helps us to see that God is with us as our situations that require us to rethink out plans. God is a partner who wants to work with us to figure out the pivots we need to make. 

How then do we learn to pivot? One of the best ways to do this is to develop the habit of getting on the balcony and looking at the path that you are on. Imagine that along the road of life there are places where you can perch above the path and see where you need to adjust. Here you can look back, understand where you are, and survey what might be coming. I’ve found that at these pivot perches, I am more readily aware of God’s presence. These are spaces where we can pull away and listen to God’s direction. 

It is crucial that we do this when we hit a roadblock on the path. But we can also do this in a proactive way. For instance, some do this once per week on a day off, as they look at where they have been and what lies ahead. It’s also a good practice to do this at specific points during the day. This will help you make sure that you are not merely getting pulled into the vortex of busyness and are focusing on what is really important. 

The Lord is Merciful and Gracious

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin …” —Exodus 34:6-7

I grew up going to church. Back then, I would hear sermons at least two times per week. I went to Sunday School and attended an additional Bible study every week. There was a lot of sitting and listening to people talk about God and the Bible. This continued when I went to college. Then after getting married to Shawna, we were are part of a church where we listened to three sermons per week. To say the least, I’ve heard a lot of sermons. While I do not remember the details of each, I can honestly say that there was not one sermon given on this passage. This is a bit problematic since these verses serve as a foundational core to the Old Testament. They are like a thesis statement in a term paper, as they define how the Israelite people were meant to view who God is. These words act as a starting point for defining the character of who God is. We know this because these words are repeated in different books of the Old Testament. 

The fact that I never heard a sermon on these verses illustrates another problem. When I thought about who God is or what God’s character is like, the qualities of his nature found in these verses were not the starting point. They were not even included. I would describe God as all-knowing, all-powerful, all-controlling, and absolutely different from anything that a human being is. Above all, God was the ultimate judge, the one who constantly assessed my every choice, waiting to catch me when I messed up. To me, God was the great tyrant that demanded my allegiance, and he was ready to point his finger at me when I failed. 

I was told that this is what we should expect of the God of the Old Testament. Jesus is the nice side of God. But God the Father is the angry judge that no one likes.  

Yet, these verses from the Old Testament do not present this kind of picture of God, as your mother so aptly stated in her sermon. This definition of God’s character does not include the words that I grew up hearing. Instead of a God who is absolutely different from human beings, God is relational. In fact, we read that God has the character traits that are valued by kind, healthy human being. Instead of distant and controlling, God is merciful and gracious. Instead of judgmental and angry, God is actually slow to become angry. Instead of controlling and holding all power over everything, God is loving and faithful. 

The perspective taught in the churches I attended for most of my life actually represent the way the majority of churches talk about God. For those raised  in the Catholic Church, much of the teaching therein is founded upon the writings of Thomas Aquinas. He said that when we think about God we need to picture him as completely contradictory in every way from humans. Whereas we give and receive love through relationship with other people, and therefore our affections are impacted by others. God, Aquinas said, is untouchable. He actually is like an unmoving pillar. We can navigate around his static existence, but he never shifts in relationship to us. He can cause the world to spin as it does, but what occurs in this world and how we live and love does not have any impact on who he is, how he feels, or the way that he acts. 

But if this is the case, then the claim found in Exodus that God as loving, forgiving and faithful makes no sense. Take forgiveness. There is no need for God to forgive someone unless that person has done something that was hurtful to God in relationship. If God is not impacted by others, then there is not reason for him to forgive their actions toward him. The same applies to loving others. Love is about giving and receiving. It’s about opening up our lives to others. If God is completely unaffected by us, then how can we say that he loves us? 

I’m writing this in a coffee shop. If I accept Aquinas’ view of God, then God is really not present with me. I have to put myself into holy place with holy people and a holy leader in order to meet with God. And then the only thing that I can do is listen to God’s static commands to me. This would be like trying to be a friend with a really famous person, and they set specific parameters upon the relationship. They would only meet in special places, not in common spaces like a coffee shop. Then when we met, they would have a PR representative read from a canned speech. 

Some don’t go quite this far. They might say that they could meet with God in a coffee shop, but it’s a one-way conversation. God speaks, and we listen. And if I cannot understand what God is saying then I am the problem. I would say that this is the way I grew up. This would be sitting with a friend at a coffee shop and listening to them talk for two hours without showing any interest in you. No one would call that loving. 

The core characteristics of God found in these verses announce that God is actually sitting here with me as I write this, and I can interact with her. God really listens to me and wants to hear where I am coming from, and what I am experiencing actually affects her. My words, my opinions, my feelings actually matter to her. God extends his life to us but does so in such a way that our lives have an impact her. That’s the way that love, faithfulness, and forgiveness work if I were sitting here with a friend in this coffee shop. 

The Knowledge of God is Relational

The growth in knowledge of any object depends upon the encounter between someone who wants to know about that object and the object itself. This the only way to develop an understanding of any thing, of any animal, or of any person. The experience of a personal encounter is rudimentary. This claim may appear obvious when it comes to the knowledge of something like a rock, for instance, but understanding how we develop a battery of information about a rock can help us understand the way that God is understandable. 

The character of a rock is effusive, that is it is self-showing. What I encounter when I pick up a rock and assess its characteristics is an actual manifestation or performance of the nature of what it means to be a rock. The rock’s “rockness” is shown through the encounter. In some ways, it’s like a dramatic performance. If you want to know the meaning of a play like Hamlet, you must look at the performance of the play itself. You will never understand Hamlet if you only read the cliff-notes version or if you read reviews of the play. We begin to know a rock when we pick it up and allow the rock’s self-showing to impact us. The identity of a rock is demonstrated to my senses as its characteristics are performed. 

Any knowledge I have of a rock is compiled through personal engagement where I perceived what the rock shows itself to be. The encounter of the self-showing rock is the data from which I know what a rock is. 

Any theory of what it means to be a rock or a set of ideas about the definition of rockness depends upon this encounter. I might come to a particular rock with a preconceived notion of what it means to be a rock, but if I hold onto those preconceived ideas I’m not developing a knowledge of the rock. I only have a knowledge about ideas about a rock. Any knowledge of the rock itself will depend upon my opening myself up to the influence of the rock I am holding. In other words, I cannot know a rock by reading a book about it. 

Now there is a long tradition that claims that the rock as it shows itself to me is not real. It is only a shadow of an idea of a rock. The performance of a particular rock fails to give us any true knowledge about the nature of a rock. For that, we must develop a set of ideas about the perfect rock. This is a very simplified version of Plato’s ancient concept of ideals, and he teaching has influenced the way that we think far more than we want to admit. For those who hold this position about knowledge of an object, I would ask: how would you know that an ideal rock actually exists? This is an important question because no one has ever actually seen such a ideal rock. Why should we trust the claim of Plato that there is such an ideal being called Rock which provides the true nature of what what it means to be a rock? How did Plato every contrive such a claim when in fact it only existed in his imagination? And why it this ideal more important than the encounter with the rock itself? 

I would argue that if you believe in such a thing as an ideal rock, then the only way to conceive of it is to gather as much information as possible from picking up various rocks. It all comes back to personal knowledge through personal encounters with rocks themselves. But that’s not what Plato said.

The same is true of our knowledge of God. The nature of God is self-showing. What God is at the core is performed and the only way to know who God is is to interact with what God shows himself to be. One must actually interact with the self-showing of God. Simply put, God’s actions reveal God’s nature. Therefore, the knowledge of God is a knowledge of God’s performance. If you want to get to know another person, you will need to spend time with them. Their actions in life will show you what they are really like. Their core identity, their real beliefs, their character, will come to life in their performance. In other words, who a person is is revealed in their actions.

A lot of people come to God with ideas about what God is like. They project that information upon God and thereby misinterpret what it means for God to be divine. They focus on religious ideas rather than looking at the divine performance. In other words, they develop a knowledge of God like Plato did. They comprise a list of characteristics about, God and then they assess whether or not that God is worthy of time an attention. For instance, there is a standard teaching that God is in complete control of the universe, but if that is the case, then how is God good since there is so much evil in the world? Or they might read the Bible and see how there are passages in the Old Testament that depict God as violent and angry. When I was much younger, I took these two teachings about God and conceived of God as an angry, control freak. However, I was projecting ideas upon God. My knowledge was not based on God’s self-showing. I just had a lot ideas about God floating around in my head.

With God, we must focus our knowledge on the ultimate revelation of divine self-showing. This, the Bible claims, is manifestation of the performance of Jesus. If you want to know God, then come to know Jesus. We are not left guessing what God is like. We do not need to comprise a list of ideas and definitions about God. God comes in real life as a real person and shows us what it means to be God. 

This is the doorway to knowledge of God.

It Begins with God

"In the beginning God ..." (Gen 1:1)

The Bible opens with God as the subject who acts in the course of history. God creates. God talks. God walks. God interjects. God intervenes. God protects. God leads. God corrects. God disciplines. God comes. God heals. God turns water into wine. God teaches. God eats. God raises another from the dead. God loves. God dies. God rises. God ascends. God empowers. God works.

God, God, God. The Bible starts out with God as the subject. With the turning of each page, we read how the story unfolds with God as the primary actor. If we don't get this about the Bible's way of talking about God, it would be like watching Hamlet without a Hamlet, Forest Gump without anyone actually playing Forest Gump, or reading a DC Justice League comic without Superman. The story would be totally different in its very nature. 

A different kind of story is exactly that many have experienced. When we go to church, God far too often not at the center. Instead, the message is primarily about what we as humans can and cannot do in order to keep God happy. Or we are told what we can and cannot do to have a better life. Or we discover what we can do to make the world a better place. Instead of God being the primary actor on the world stage, we have been told that we are the lead actors. The story of God turns into the story of "me." 

It is very easy to change the story from God to me. Even when we proclaim God's glory in worship, our world and the way we do life in our world is shaped by a secular imagination. In other words, we have learned to live as if God is not active. As a result, we go through day-to-day existence as if we are the lead actors on the stage of life. I can go through an entire day as if I am in control of making my life happen the way that I want it to. We search for the right formula to make life work so that we can get the kind of results what we want. It's something like a + b + c = the good life. And of course, I am in control of a + b + c.

While the choices we make matter, none of us are the lead actor in the story of creation. God is at work in the world, creating and recreating life, doing far more than what we can do in our a + b + c perspective of trying to make life work. God still acts. God still comes. God still intervenes. God still works miracles. We just don't see it.

In the midst of our world where the sense of divine presence has been squeezed out, we need to let the lead actor shape our imagination. "In the beginning, God ..." initiates the story and he does not exit to leave us on our own: 

      Today, in the midst of our life, God ...
      Today, as you go to work, God ...
      Today, as you interact with family, God ...
      Today, as you struggle, God ...
      Today, as you win, God ...

This action of God does not occur the way we expect or we want. We tend to look at surface events and wonder where God is. Why is God not fixing the war between the Russia and the Ukraine? Why do we still see so much racism, misogyny, and inequality? Why are people just so downright horrible? Where is God acting in all of this? 

This is the radical difference between the way God acts and the way humans typically act. We identify the ways that we can do things that make a change in a direct way. This is the a + b + c approach. I do things  to make something happen like a billiard ball hitting another ball into the hole. If someone hurts you, I want to jump in and fix it and I want the other person to know what they did. Not only that I want them to admit that they were wrong, even if I have to force them to do so. This has been the source of many wars throughout history. 

God acts in love, which means that God acts through relationship. He wants good to happen and he hates it when people are hurting the people. But he cannot make people change. He cannot force them to be loving. Love only comes about through love, and this takes a lot longer than I prefer. 

God is the primary actor on the stage of life, and this action is the slow movement of love. This is what begins with God. And ultimately, it ends with God. Love is the only thing that will remain. It's the only thing that matters,  even on the stage of life where love is covered up by the pursuit of power and control. Love will always endure, and it's the only way that God acts to bring about the good and beautiful in the world. 

Photo by Jay Antol on Unsplash