Responsibility and Influence III

I started this answer by saying that I prefer the words 'joy and overflow' to 'responsibility and influence', for the reasons below.

What is our main joy – and our responsibility - as human beings? It is to see and love the difference between us and God.

It comes from Jesus’ words to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength.

Why is this joyful? Because God is so incredible.

He is huge and tiny. He made the Himalayan mountains – breathtaking in their size - where I went to boarding school, he designed the world down to the smallest particle – an atom.

He is creative, colourful, clever. He thought of literature, poetry, stories, music, rhythm and harmony.

He is ultimately stable and the same, and he is ultimately changing and variable. He created species, systems and ecosystems. Nothing exists without him.

And if this all were not enough, God is completely good. And he is absolutely loving. And he is ultimately wise.

So it is an amazing joy for us to love God, when we really see him for who he is.

When Jesus was asked what was the ‘greatest commandment’, it might almost be better put as the ‘greatest privilege’. It is an utter privilege to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. It is a joy to honour God as God.

Out of that joy comes responsibility to love God, because it ought to be done. But because it is a joy, it is not a responsibility – at least not a responsibility that is onerous, choresome, a drag.

It is a responsibility that we can be jumping into with all that we are. God is God! Wow!