Week 51 - Day 4

*Last 2 weeks!  These will also be 5-day weeks instead of 6.  If you would be interested in sharing personal reflections or things God has shown or taught you through the year, please email me at ejmushlock@gmail.com .

1 John 1-5

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1 John 1-5 YouVersion(NIV)

There seems to be an if-you’re-going-to-talk-the-talk,-you-better-walk-the-walk kind of theme in 1 John, but what really stood out to me today in this reading was the apostle John’s teaching on love. 

First, I needed the reminder of how great the Father’s love is for us.  It seems such a simple truth – God loves me - but it is easy to stop being in awe of how wonderful and amazing that really is.  I have two Bibles at home - one is a newer one I use most often, but then I also have my old, falling apart one that was the Bible I really used to study on my own outside of church for the first time.  Most of the underlined verses and notes made in it were from when I was younger physically as well as younger in my faith, and sometimes it is refreshing to remember the things that had such an impact on me at that time.  Today I found in this Bible exclamation points squeezed in the margin after this: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!!!!!  And that is what we are!!!!!!”  I don’t ever want to lose that enthusiasm and excitement and wonder of God’s love and that He calls us His children!

Then, the phrase “love one another” seems to be repeated in 1 John many times.  In fact, I wonder how many times throughout the whole Bible that phrase shows up … I know it is a lot.  The world is all about loving and doing for yourself: what makes you happy, what you want, what makes you look good, but the Father is all about loving others.  “Since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (4:11).  And here is the key: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”  (3:18) 

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (4:12).  This reminds me of my favorite line from my favorite musical Les Miserable: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”