Way of Love:Loving in the moment

[Intro].

For you who this is your first Sunday with us, we welcome you to The Journey Church.
Thank you for choosing to be with us. We are a community that wants people and our
world to be fully alive in the love of God. This is the journey we are on! Today is our
fourth Sunday since we started a Sunday service and thats a real milestone! Happy
one month old!

We have been engaged in a conversation called Way of love for the last couple of
weeks and today we want to pause and consider what it means to be a way of love for a
time such as this in our nation. We are calling it Loving in the moment.

[Scripture] Luke 10:25-37 The Good Samaritan -Jesus said to him, Go and do
likewise.

This has been quite a season for us as a nation - we are a nation in a crisis: charged
political temperatures, charged emotions, tough economic times, the surfacing of deep
issues yet to be dealt with as a nation, uncertainty and various forms of ugliness. The
thing is, as I look at the world today, I realise we are not alone in this. Most nations of
the world are going through their own challenges. And then again as I look at the
scriptures in the old testament, I realise that it is to a large extent the story of a nations
journey. As the nation of Israel journeyed along, it had moments of crisis and breakdown
equalling or even worse that our own troubled times. There were moments of crisis that
would literally rip the nation apart and then after some time they would rebuild. In a
sense I am comforted to know that we are on our own journey as a nation as well. I
realise that this is not our end but a point of crisis. I also learn that God was ever
present in the story of this nation of Israel through the generations. I also realise that in
as much as God cares about individuals, he is also deeply involved in the story of a
nation as a whole.

God is busy redeeming and shaping history; but for us all we have is this moment right
in front of us. What does it look like to be a way of love? To be love in this moment.
There was once when G. K. Chesterton, brilliant writer and witty journalist was
corresponding with a magazine and they asked him, whats the problem with the world?
He wrote back, To whom it may concern, I am. Yours truly. Yes the issues are great and
overwhelming. We may be feeling many things at this moment. What is the problem with
Kenya? Those people. This party. That tribe. Politicians. Police. Many people are
thinking like this. The priest and the levite thought like this. But We need to think I am.
Often times I have looked at the pain and crisis in our nation as something out there,
affecting some people directly but myself indirectly. But for myself and each of us, we
need to look at our nation as one body. The pain, brokenness and crisis is not out there,
it is within each one of us. We are one body and when a part of the body is hurting, the
whole body aches! And as we deal with our bodies, so we must begin to deal with our
nation. When we ache in any part of our bodies, we never say - headache sort yourself.
We know that our body is unwell and treat the headache.

This morning I would like us to look at the body we call Kenya and name the parts that
are hurting. Why this is important is because it begins to shift the problem from being
out there for those people to being in here and being my problem. Before we can get
up and move into our world as activists of love, we need to sit and mourn the
brokenness that keeps crippling our nation. To act in healing ways is an act of love and
also to mourn the brokenness and destruction is also an act of love. When the nation of
Israel faced moments of real crisis and destruction, close to or even greater to what we
have now one of the things they learnt to do was name the crisis, the pain and sit in the
ashes of that for a little while. They learnt to lament - to give the pain and crisis some
breathing room.
Lamentations 3:1-24 We hold this pain and frustrations to you o Lord. It is our pain. It is
our mess. Remember us!

Psalm 13 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your
face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all
day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O
Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will
say, I have prevailed; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your
steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because
he has dealt bountifully with me.

Lamentations 3:1 - 24 I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of Gods wrath;
he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone he
turns his hand, again and again, all day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste
away, and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and
tribulation; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me
about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me; though I call and cry for
help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made
my paths crooked. He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he led me off my
way and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate; he bent his bow and set me as a
mark for his arrow. He shot into my vitals the arrows of his quiver; I have become the
laughingstock of all my people, the object of their taunt-songs all day long. He has filled
me with bitterness, he has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on
gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what
happiness is; so I say, Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.
The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul
continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and
therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never
come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my
portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.
Reflections

Prayer I

What has disturbed you about our nation lately? Where does our nation hurt? Put this
down in the how long O Lord!

Prayer II What are we feeling now?

Response
The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.