Traditionally, Tom and I start every week with Tom’s special porridge for breakfast. What makes it special?
More than just plain oatmeal, Tom adds lots of cinnamon, maple syrup, craisins, blueberries or strawberries, or apples, or peaches, or whatever is in season, yummy butter, and a pinch of salt. This wonderful mixture of flavours tastes like dessert for breakfast. Tom likes making porridge and loves me. And so our porridge is seasoned with “lots of love”.
For me, Tom’s porridge recipe is like God’s recipe for creation. God has created an infinite variety of beautiful and good things and mixed them together to produce our spectacular world and all living things in it. Like Tom’s porridge, it’s the rainbow of variety and God’s infinite love that makes the beauty of creation spectacular.
John’s gospel tells us that God spoke, “and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It’s important to read those words carefully and notice what is missing. “The Word became flesh,” not black flesh or white flesh or brown flesh or whatever colour, not Christian flesh or Muslim flesh or Jewish flesh or whatever faith, not any particular kind of flesh. We know from true life experience that God created humanity with the same love of variety as God created everything else. In the words of Eugene Peterson’s Bible translation, The Message, “The Word became human and moved into the neighbourhood.”
As we step into 2022, let’s live this year seeing the beauty in God’s rainbow of creation. Let’s accept and follow God’s wisdom in the variety of creation. Let’s remember that God loves all people and that is our calling.
One of the most difficult tasks we face is loving people just as they are. We cannot make them be anything else. We cannot change them. We are asked only to see each person as God’s child, a miracle of creation. For 2022 let’s focus on the Word becoming flesh, accepting and loving Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, in the person standing beside us, in front of us, behind us, walking away from us. Only then can we fully enjoy God’s recipe for creation. Now that’s a New Year’s Resolution.
Today’s Faith by Rev. Janet Stobie
