John 3:16 (NLT)
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
or
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

I used to laugh pretty heartily at the folks who would have “John 3:16” hanging in the endzone of (American) football games. How stupid. What does that mean and who cares anyway? What a waste of time and energy. Turns out, me thinking that was stupid. Probably beyond stupid and solidly in the land of arrogant ignorance.

Who would sacrifice their son to save someone else? I don’t think I could pull it off. Hmmm, who am I kidding? There’s no way I could. I’d rather sacrifice myself than my son (or daughter). Why would God do that? Love. Pure, pure, pure love. That’s God’s paradigm of love.

This is just another example of how far we are from God, though in our mind’s eye, we think we’re much closer. Nope.

Proverbs 11:25 (NLT)
25 The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.

I wonder if God felt he was being generous when He allowed us to nail his Son to the cross. I wonder if love allows for feeling generous when we help someone out. When we do something out of love, we aren’t doing it so we can be proud of it, we’re doing it because we love and want to help. Right? Generosity ought to come from love, not pride. When we are generous out of love, we’re much more vested. True generosity comes from love and it refreshes our soul, it regenerates and grows. Generosity born from pride disolves quickly in the torrent of the world.

Proverbs 18:21 (NLT)
21 The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.

The tongue expresses our true thoughts and we deal with the words. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but they heal. Words will always stick with us, we don’t forget them, in spite of the wishful thinking of the rhyme we learned when we were young.

A generous soul, giving out of love, has no room for a lashing tongue, no room for pride, not room for hate.

What’s the point here? We need to use this love, this generosity, as the lens we use to view the world when we sift through all the rhetoric we’re bombarded with. It changes everything, just like God did when he gave his only Son.