God is love and only love. God loves us with a faithful love and desires that we remain close to him. This is a love that defies reason and never gives up on us. God never changes God’s mind about loving us. This love is evidenced by today’s three readings. In the chapters that come before today’s first reading of Genesis 3:9-15, God creates man and woman in divine love, agape. That divine love never waivers, not even in the face of the first of our many sins. This was the first sin of our faithlessness in what God commanded; a sin that sought independence from God and God’s wisdom. But God doesn’t waste anything. He finds a way, as we will see, to bring some good out of our frailty, if we draw near to God. In love, the psalmist says in Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the Lord in anxious expectation; I place my hope in his word.” This could be our mantra.

Faith in God’s word stamps out temptation. In our lives this world inundates us with enticements to go it alone. We are encouraged to be individualists, to rely only on ourselves. But again, and again God reminds us that we can do nothing without Him, without his love. It is for us to rely on the power of God to overcome the temptation to navigate this life without him. We do this, not by our own strength, but by God’s strength. In this way, we remain close to our Lord, which is God’s desire.

In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul encourages us. He confirms that God does indeed want us near, that He will love us well into eternity. Paul reminds us of the words of Jesus from John 14:2 “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” This is a pledge that there is a place prepared just for us by our Lord, “a dwelling not made with hands,” where he will abide with us for all eternity. That is the promise of Jesus for a life with him after this life.

Today’s Gospel, taken from the third chapter of Mark, verses 20-35, reinforces the invitation of Jesus for us to stay with Him as a part of His family. Imagine Jesus and the disciples, they have been walking in the hot sun, talking, healing and preaching all day. They are exhausted. They try to find time to sit and eat, but the crowds are making relentless demands on their time, making accusations that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebub, and looking for a way to dismiss Jesus as a lunatic. Even his family is unsure of his state of mind and tries to take him home away from the crowds. But look what Jesus does. Jesus doesn’t get discouraged by their lack of faith. He uses something that could be disheartening, something humiliating, to beckon this entire crowd of boisterous, nay saying unbelievers to be a part of his family. God doesn’t waste anything, not even adversity. Not his own, not ours. In his words, “Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

We ought to be rejoicing in the unconditional love of God for each one of us. This is an invitation to a love that moves mountains. This is the love that parted the Red Sea, that chose to be one of us to save us. God doesn’t waste anything as evidenced by this love that made an intentional choice every day to endure death on the cross so that each one of us could spend eternity with him.

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