It’s always worth pausing and checking in with ourselves: How is the state of our love for God? What are the ways we’re feeling that love, expressing that love, committed to that love? You know, that can be gratitude for God, awe before God, commitment to God, care for the ways we connect with God, enjoyment of divine Beauty, devotion, yearning for God, and other dimensions of love. 

We can also ask: How is it with our acceptance of God’s love for us? That can be being open to divine mercy, divine grace, allowing ourselves to feel God’s unconditional love, accepting God’s support and courage, God’s challenge to us to grow, and other dimensions of love. 

Then: How is it with our love for others? Other people, other beings with whom we share creation in among the more-than-human world … what’s the state of our ability to love those who are close to us? And those who are more distant?

And: How is it with our ability to receive love from others?

When we ask ourselves these questions and reflect in an honest and merciful way, we may become aware of a lot to feel satisfied about and to be grateful for. 

We also probably will become aware of the ways that we’re blocked from love for God or love from God or love for others or love from others. That can be really helpful to name. That’s part of the journey. Oftentimes there’s hurt involved. Fear. Or confusion. That’s understandable. Sometimes we have been taught things about God or about ourselves that aren’t true and really sabotage love.

Some impediments are due things outside our control. Some are due to our own doing.

Asking this question about how it is with our love for and from God, can help us become aware of healing we may need; or cleansing we may need; responsibility we need to assume; forgiveness we need to receive or give; or things we need to release; or questions we need to explore; or commitments we need to claim. 

Among some inspired teachers of the way of Jesus in the first centuries after Jesus, there was an image they used for this that I find helpful and want to share with you. This is an image that has been remembered and passed down among our Eastern Orthodox siblings, but has been largely forgotten among our Protestant and Catholic siblings. 

The soul, according to this teaching, is like a mirror that reflects the light of God. This is a way of understanding what it means that we are created in the image of God. God is like light from the sun and our souls are like mirrors that naturally reflect that light. They are not the light itself, but can be filled with the light and shine with it. 

All of this radiance is love, divine Love. 

However, in this world as it is and with humanity as it is, these mirrors in our souls, when just left to themselves, become corroded and covered in grime. Back in the first century mirrors were made out of highly polished bronze or silver. It took some regular effort to keep them from oxidizing and gathering dust. 

The sacrament of baptism, you could say, is like a great initial cleansing of this mirror for God’s love in our souls, and a commitment within a community of faith to stay dedicated to cleaning and buffing it and keeping it pointed toward the Holy. The practices of our faith within a community of faith and within the way of Jesus are ways of keeping our souls cleaned and calibrated to the Love of God. The practices of prayer, of holy listening, of sacred silence, of devotional song, the practices of generosity, of charity, of justice seeking solidarity, the practices of humility, of self-examination, of forgiveness, of mercy, of nonjudgment, the practices of study and reflection, the practices of sacrament and worship … these can all be ways of keeping the mirrors of our souls from getting too cruddy with everything that would block us from loving and receiving love, love for and love from God, love for and love from others in this human and this more-than-human world. 

Sometimes we’re earnest and wholehearted. Sometimes we’re just going through the motions. Sometimes we forget or actively turn away. Sometimes we really enjoy the crud and the muck and relish the pain and the bitterness or just get comfortably numb. 

By God’s grace the light of love is always there. By God’ grace the true nature of our souls turns toward that love and basks in it and shines with it. By God’s grace, even a dirty mirror has luster. By God’s grace that little luster can grow and warm and shine when we just say Yes to God’s love, even just a little, and to return to that Yes often enough that the mirror gets at least a spit and a shine every now and again.

The good news is that the more we are devoted to faithful habits and practices out of our love, the greater the divine love we enjoy and share. 

The really good news is that in all of this we are suffused and surrounded with grace, God’s grace, as embodied and shown forth by Jesus. 

Thanks be to God. 

(Delivered Sunday, January 15, 2023 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge)

Image: ThomasLendt, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons