He may have been a just, inflexible god, who cared in a remote way for his creatures, but could not really be said to love us. As the scriptures say this morning, sending his son amongst us is the prime evidence of that love. The love shows itself in many ways - through the service of others, through genuine gratitude. Gratitude unlocks joy. Gratitude releases us from our self-absorption.
Love shows itself through good planning.
There are many, many examples of this parents with their children, what school will they send them to, keeping an eye on their friends, making sure the teenagers are not accessing pornography through the Internet, not reading too much of the wrong sorts of magazines. But how can we reconcile the importance of love with the big picture, the total picture, you might say the scientific picture. Most of us I suppose have been up to the top of the Rialto building and looked down, or been in aeroplanes and looked down at the tiny humans and cars and things that are travelling on earth, a different perspective. And from the miracle of modern communication I want to just take a few thoughts from an article that appeared earlier this month in an English Catholic magazine, The Tablet , from the other side of the world. For us to have such quick access is a comparatively recent development and the article was written by a man called Russell Stannard who is a retired professor of philosophy at the Open University in England.