08491
July 9, 2008
Love is all you need
God’s love is never withheld, Green tells Montreat Youth Conference
The Rev. Bridgett Green MONTREAT, NC — In a world where a child dies every five seconds from hunger, where thousands are stranded in squalid conditions years after devastating gulf coast storms, where students are unjustly held in jail after defending themselves from racist attacks, where kids are bullied and tormented daily by classmates, love can be very hard to find.
“So where is the love?” the Rev. Bridgett Green asked 1,300 high schoolers Tuesday night (July 8) who are here for week three of the 2008 Montreat Youth Conferences.
Preaching from the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, Green — who is associate for Racial Ethnic Young Women Together (REYWT) in the Women’s Ministries program area of the General Assembly Council — said God’s love can be as elusive as it is readily apparent and available.
“Sin is lurking at the door, making a home for itself in the doorway of our relationship with God,” Green said. “And if we do not control that which may cause us to sin, then we are in deep danger … of obstructing our way to God.”
Although the Bible describes many acts as sinful, Green continued, ‘the real sin is that we live without caring about God or without understanding how deeply God loves and cares for us. To live without caring about God or to live without knowing how deeply God cares for us keeps us from being close to our families, our friends and those around us.”
For Cain, Green said, the sin was not the unacceptability of his sacrifice, but his angry reaction to God’s rejection of his sacrifice. “That anger is driving a wedge between him and God and between Cain and his brother. Cain does not master his anger and so the sin takes over him.”
What is God to do when sin takes over our lives? Green queried. “First, God lets the natural consequences of Cain’s murder of Abel to take their course,” she said. “He can no longer have a healthy relationship with his family and he can no longer have a productive relationship with the land.”
Alluding to the conference theme: “Throw Open the Doors!” Green said, “The door to God is broken ...” and “the door is broken for [Cain] to the rest of the world.”
But even for the guilty, Green said, God gives grace. “God knows Cain is guilty, but God gives him grace anyway …. Although God judges Cain, God does not condemn him for an eternity… Although God does not seem as visible to Cain, God is still very present.”
So where is the love? “The love is God, with God, in God and through God,” Green concluded.
“The world needs to feel and know the presence and love of God. The love that God shares and the love that God wants to share through us.
“This is what this messed up world needs. I need it. You need it. We need it. The world needs it,” she said as the auditorium filled with the strains of Dionne Warwick’s classic “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.”
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