The Hoop of Love

            I wrote earlier that one of the things I felt about my ordination was a sense of relief.  I just want to explain a little more what I meant by that.

            It was not just a sense of relief that I’d actually been approved.  There was some of that, of course; you never know for sure that something is going to happen until it does.  Still, I was not all that worried that I was going to be rejected.

            The sense of relief comes from the fact that ordination is an awfully long process, and there are a lot of things you have to do.  I know there needs to be a process, and I know there are good reasons why the process is what it is.  My point is not to be critical.  Still, after a while, I started feeling like I was just being asked to jump through hoops, and fifty-three is pretty old to be jumping through hoops.  The relief comes from knowing that I’m finally through with the process, and I finally don’t have to jump through hoops any more.

            Except, of course, that’s not true.  I won’t have to jump through those same hoops again, but I’ll still have to jump through hoops.  We all do.  If you’ve ever tried to get a driver’s license, you’ve had to jump through hoops.  If you’ve ever been involved in a car accident, you’ve had to jump through hoops.  If you’ve ever tried to get (or use) health insurance, you’ve had to jump through hoops.  If you’ve ever had to deal with the government in any way, you’ve had to jump through hoops. 

I’m not whining about it.  Well, maybe I am, but my point is not to whine about it.  My point is that this is just the way life is.  Jumping through hoops is completely non-discriminatory.  It does not matter who you are.  It does not matter where you live.  It does not matter what you look like.  It does not matter how much money you have.  It does not even matter how powerful you are.  Even the president, who is sometimes referred to as the most powerful man on earth, has times when he has to jump through hoops.  It’s just the way it goes.

The great thing about God is that God hardly has any hoops at all.  The church can have a lot of them, sometimes, but God does not.  In fact, I can only think of one hoop God has:  love.  Jesus told us to love God and to love the people God created.  That’s the only hoop God asks us to jump through:  the hoop of love.  The other hoops were created by humans, not by God.

Society, being full of human beings, will ask us to jump through lots of hoops.  As we consider those hoops, let’s remember to stay focused on God’s hoop of love.  If we all made sure we jumped through that one, the other hoops would become pretty much irrelevant.