Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“We love because he first loved us.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, July 17, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
God is love. We are created in God’s image. Therefore we are love. We love because God, in love, created us in the image of God’s love. This isn’t just about erotic love or familial love or any sort of love that is confined to the sense of a “feeling.” This love is an action. It is creation. It is connection. It is service. It is sacrificial and transformational and mind-blowing.
This isn’t just about trying to emulate some ideal God has for us. This is about being who and what we were created to be in the first place and already are.
In God’s ultimate act through Jesus on the cross, we caught a glimpse of the depth and breadth and incomprehensibility of the love that God is, and that God created us to be. In the beginning, God created the world in love, ergo, we love. In the cross, God reiterated, proclaimed, blew the doors off love, ergo, we love.
Of course we can’t take it for granted. Again, it’s not about feeling. It’s about action. God’s love calls us to act in love each day in every interaction we have with the whole of creation.
Where have I shown God’s love in my interactions today? How can I make a practice of noticing all the ways I lean into my identity as God’s love?
