Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, July 12, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
If you want to know what God looks like, look around you. The writer of 1 John says that no one has ever seen God, but then makes the point that God lives in us. Therefore, when we see each other, we see God. And it’s not just human beings. When I look at my cat, I see God. When I catch sight of an indigo bunting or a white-tailed deer or a massive cedar tree, I see God. When I hear Wind in the Leaves by Carbon Leaf or stare at Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes on loan from Rome or someone recites some of Walt Whitman’s The Song of Myself to me, I encounter God. In the endless diversity of life and creation and creativity, we catch a glimpse of the One who dreamed us up and brought us into being and lives in the temples of our bodies and our spirits. I encourage you to take a moment to explore the world around you today and really recognize the face and presence of God—and then to express that presence in an act of love for someone else.
What things in my life most fill me with an assurance of the presence of God?
