God So Loved the World: Week 2
Jesus, Jacob's Well and the Samaritan Woman
“Our Lord knew that with the great talents that were his, he could have been a greater conqueror than Alexander and ruled a wider empire than Caesar...
He would have ruled in wisdom justice and generosity…
His rule would have imposed upon them a heaven upon earth…
In the tormented man tearing himself away from the vision of the glory of the earthly kingdom that might have been his, we see again the little boy turning away from the earthly Jerusalem and going so patiently back to Nazareth.“
🕊Elizabeth Goudge, God So Loved the World
Every year I read Malcolm Guite’s poetry anthology, The Word in the Wilderness, for Lent. It’s a glorious wealth of inspiration, and his “unpacking” of poetry is the best part. It’s helped me to understand poetry at a whole other level.
As I’m also reading Goudge’s book, which quickly covers his infancy and starts in chapter 3 with his adult ministry, I was struck by how Guite and Goudge both similarly think about Jesus’ ability to overcome Satan. In Jesus’ last temptation, they both say it was the humility he knew because he was a human which helped him to win! Quite a surprising idea!
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