Perhaps the time has come in the life of our faith to rest in the sovereignty of God’s love, to really believe, for a change, that God’s love is so amazing that we don’t have to be defensive, angry or judgmental.

God is truly greater than our denomination, dogma or doctrine.

Such an understanding opens us up to new revelations of God, surprising new experiences of the kingdom.

A missionary once said that he never entered a Chinese village for evangelism with the sense that he was taking Christ there for the first time but always convinced that Christ had been there before him.

Such an attitude dissipates our angry arrogance and opens us up to the resurrected and resurrecting God.

I keep going back to that image of the Emmaus Road when the resurrected Christ walked with the two disciples and they didn’t recognize him. I believe that people all over the world are still walking on that road and Christ is walking with them. They may not know his name. They may not have heard his story. They may not ever learn of Jerusalem or Calvary. But in their acts of compassion, in their moments of grace and gentle kindness, Christ is made known and they discover God.

It was Leslie Weatherhead who wrote, "It is possible that we can understand the nature of God more fully by being good Buddhists than bad Baptists."

Amen.