Lent 22 - Love Protects II

Peace in the midst of a storm, By Jack E Dawson
Credit jackdawson.com

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters". 1 John 3:16

If I am loved, will the Creator protect me?  Look at the life of Jesus.  Was he protected?  Jesus lived through the most traumatic experiences, eventually ending with his murder....so, er, no(?)  Love protects must be something different.  I think it is similar to the parent who sees their child abuse alcohol/drug or gamble having their face slammed down in the mud by this possession.  The parent plays no part in the evil and yearns for dignity for their child.  This love is enormous and laden with pain.  They do everything to protect their child, except take away their freedom and bind they up.

Ultimately Jesus was protected by being transformed through glorious resurrection on Easter Day.  This is the same for us.  Ultimately we are protected at that considerably deeper level.  

This is what Alexey Navalny said during his sentencing in a Russian court (February 2021).  

“If you want I’ll talk to you about God and salvation. I’ll turn up the volume of heartbreak to the maximum, so to speak. The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually rather sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists and I was once quite a militant atheist myself.

But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier. I think about things less. There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying. And so, as I said, it’s easier for me, probably, than for many others, to engage in politics."

Ultimately Alexey was murdered in a Siberian Gulag on 16th February 2024

PRAYER: I praise you that I am now free to live like you.

PS I heard this picture described many years ago in a sermon.  It features a small dove sheltering in the cliff face in the tumult of a storm.  I have tried to find information about it, when it was painted, and were it is to be found currently, but with no success.