Listen

Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us. This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit.

1 John 4:11-13

Think

Isn’t it crazy that we’ve never seen God?!

But then, I think about the times in the Old Testament when human beings came close to God and what happened to them: Moses aged when he saw God as the burning bush; Jacob’s hip was broken, a permanent change to his ability to walk, when he wrestled with God; Israelites were forbidden to go into the innermost part of the temple in fear they may see God and die.

But then, God came to earth. God came into flesh and skin and bone and looked us human beings in the eye.

God loved us so much that God came to us in a way that we might understand. And the author of 1 John tells us that this God that we once wouldn’t dream of stepping near now lives inside of us!

What a crazy and holy love we have the opportunity to hold within us, and share with others!

Molly Shoulta Tucker

Pray

Unchanging God, throughout history you have revealed yourself to us in vivid, guiding ways. Reveal the fire of your Spirit within us, that drives us to love others with the same fierceness as you love us! Amen.

Go

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure —
The saints’ and angels’ song!

from “The Love of God” by Frederick Martin Lehman (1917)