Foolishness

(Meditation for Lent 3B)

God comes to us in many amazing and unexpected ways and to those of us most would think are less than stellar choices.  The poor, the weak, the broken, the sinful, the fragile.  God redeems even those that seem unredeemable. 

The most unbelievable of the ways God comes to us is in the incarnation.  How astounding is it that God came to us as a baby in a smelly manger?  Became a worker of wood?  Became one that continues to touch us and heal us?  Came to die for us?  That continues to come to us in unexpected and “foolish” ways?

This is the God whose law continues to teach us how to love God and our neighbor with the words given on a holy mountain.  The God who becomes angry at the cheapening of the temple.  The God that seems to make no sense.  The God who continues to do the unexpected, the unanticipated, the unexplainable, and the foolish. The God who continues to call us, each of us to follow this upside down journey to the cross.  The God who says repeatedly to believe in those things that seem to make no sense…to lose our lives to save them, to serve in order to lead, to give away to gain…the God that calls us out of our comfort zones to follow.

This is the God many find foolish.  Are we willing to appear foolish for God’s sake?  Foolish enough to share the Good News of God in Christ?