Love

"The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed...not even his partnership for the poor, humble people. The real trouble was that he got involved with moral failures, with obviously irreligious and immoral people; people morally and politically suspect, so many dubious, obscure, abandoned, hopeless types, existing as an eradicable evil, on the fringe of every society. This was the real scandal. Did he really have to go so far? What kind of dangerous and naive love is this, which does not know its limits: the frontiers between fellow countrymen and foreigners, party members and non-members, between neighbors and distant people, between honorable and dishonorable callings, between moral and immoral, good and bad people? As if dissociation were not absolutely necessary here. As if we ought not to judge in these cases. As if we could always forgive in these circumstances." Brennan Manning (Abba's Child, pp 65-66)

The same God who loves those who call him Abba also loves those who do not know him. What is love that we are to judge who is deserving and who is not? The love of Abba stretches as far as one side of the world to the other, encompassing every body along the way. Love for the woman who has an abortion, the man who is looking at internet porn, the homeless man on the corner who is going to take the dollar I give him and go buy more beer, the woman on G Street waiting for a man with some money to pick her up, the teenager who is cutting and doesn't tell a sole because he hates life, the father who is abusing his children, the downstairs neighbors who blare Michael Jackson music at all hours into the night, the person who is running from the overhead helicopter with the spotlight, the guy who is struggling with homosexuality and understanding his true identity, the girl who is recovering from being taken advantage of and turns to a friend who in turn takes advantage of her wounded state, the woman who is having an affair on her husband, the guy who flips people off in traffic, the Christian picketers standing out on street corners, those who are lying on their income taxes, the bombers on 9/11, you, me, and every person we cross paths with...we are all sinner...and guess what, God loves us all.