In about two months we will welcome our first grandchild. I could not help but think of this coming event as I read through the Hosea passage for this coming Sunday. It is not that I expect our grandchild to run from the “tending and lifting” offered by his loving family. No, it was the very thought of tending and lifting that caught my attention.

My mind raced to our two girls and the days spent “tending and lifting.” We could not wait for them to learn to walk. And walk they did. On occasion they exhibited a mind of their own. They knew where they wanted to go even if where they wanted to go jeopardized their safety. I am sure there were times where I talked to myself about them. And, God has a conversation with Godself as he reflects on his people metaphorically referred to as “his son.”

The texts for this coming Sunday help us to think about life in ordinary time – after all, we are in the middle of just that kind of time. It is the time between Pentecost and Christ the King Sunday – the culmination of the Christian Seasons Calendar. What do we do with our time after the rising of Jesus will go along way toward offering a sign and foretaste of life lived in love toward God embodied in our love for others.

Some of our actions undermine the very shape of the loving community shaped by the Spirit of God in the Way of Jesus. The Apostle Paul contended something new must emerge. Rather than live into the ways that undermine our love for others (anger, wrath, malice, slander, etc) we share in the life of Jesus being “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” The knowledge described here may well be the kind of spiritual knowledge Dallas Willard contends is not a peripheral knowledge, but a way of knowing that may be trusted for our living our lives the way Jesus would were he us.

What are your thoughts?