Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Low Places

While sitting on my balcony, enjoying the morning breeze, I watched as soapy water ran down the driveway below me. I noticed that water has but a single rule when it flows – it runs toward the lowest place.

Water always seeks the lowest places, rushes there as fast as it can, and sits there until it fills the place and overflows it … whereupon it seeks the next lowest-place.

Such is God’s love.

We should not conceive God’s love as a big blanket, which is thrown carelessly over the whole world. No, it is a river, a movement – it flows, looking for those low places in the world which need it the most.

Look at Jesus. The incarnate Love of God was attracted immediately to the least, last, lost, and lonely. He had a habit of ignoring the high places and people of society. And if we must be like him, then the same must be true for us.

For many years now, liberation theologians have been speaking of God’s “preferential option for the poor.” I used to question this theological concept, but I am becoming more convinced of it everyday.

Just as surely as water flows downhill to fill the low places, potholes, valleys and pits, so God’s love rushes most quickly to the people who inhabit these low places.

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24, NIV)