God is love. Some people can’t believe it. If God is love, how can he allow all of this suffering and murder and violence and corruption? If God exists, is love even one of God’s attributes? Others misunderstand this statement and would have it mean that God always and everywhere radiates a sentimental positive vibe toward all that we say and do.
In John’s day, the Greco-Roman world held to a hodgepodge of religious beliefs. With travel and communication being what they are today, the spiritual gumbo is thicker and gooier than ever.
It didn’t take long for the effects of sin on the human race to hit rock bottom. Adam and Eve ate a fruit – a seemingly simple act. Yet in the next generation they saw what that seemingly trivial deed actually meant when Cain killed Abel his brother.
Passing the last one on.
(I promise, this is the last one!)
So by this time, I was thinking breakfast should have happened a long time ago, but my river path had morphed into a worn-ish trail across the edge of fields, and it just kept being beautiful!
Eventually I just had to make up my mind to turn around (partly because I had no idea how long I’d been walking, and after all I had an essay to write). So with that, it was back along the river . . .
through the mist, and Middle Earth . . .
And to my cozy flat and breakfast.
The end. =]
Central Reflections 