Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, July 10, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Now this dichotomy I can get behind. Call me fickle. But where love is concerned, I think the field is pretty black-and-white. Love is from God. In fact, as it says elsewhere in 1 John, God IS love. Of course we could get into the weeds trying to justify our own definitions of what love actually is, but I think Jesus was pretty clear in his modeling of it. Love is an action—it is working for the good of others even to laying down our lives for them. It doesn’t discriminate who is worthy or unworthy of our love. We are to love our neighbor (which is abso-friggin’-lutely everyone). Full stop.
This is not easy. Nope. If we try to compare our own acts of love to what Jesus did… Well we won’t even go there. But since God is love, and God loves us, and God lives in and through us and works in and through us, we have opportunity after opportunity to practice this kind of sacrificial love on the daily. And every time we do it, God and all the hosts of heaven are doing the wave, people! Even in small, simple acts of love for a child or a partner or a friend or a coworker we live into this truth that our love demonstrates that we are born of God and know God. (Even if five minutes later we completely blow it!)
When have I recently shown love to someone? What does it feel like to know that God celebrates this?
