God lives in us and his love is perfect
How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 36:7
Read 1 John 4:9—16
There are various ways I have encountered people today, some face to face, some by reputation, the lively ones as media personalities, remote ones by correspondence or the phone. There are official contacts, service providers, nodding acquaintances, and there are the intimate friends. All have been given to me to love, and all in different ways. And some I cannot. I really can’t. Unless and until I see, if I can, a little of my own unloveliness. And Jesus baptised even for me. And God’s love poured out on me, this otherwise helpless sinner. And myself with the others next to me, the others I don’t really care for, all of us in the flow of this gorgeous, undeserved love, equally. Equally undeserving. Equally loved. Impossibly loved. Made one with the Lover. At his own impossible cost.
Loving God, you live in love, the Father loving the Son in the Spirit, the Son loving the Father in the Spirit. I cannot know you at all unless you love me. I cannot know you truly unless I love you in return. Otherwise you are distorted. So I cannot truly know another person unless I love them. Otherwise I distort them. I know you are love. It’s my faith, and all that I have heard from Jesus. I know I am to love. But, as simple as it sounds, the attempt to truly love undoes me. I cannot do it. It is beyond me. Therefore I distort every other person. I give up, and in that I surrender myself to you. And to your love poured out. And now, in the Spirit I pray for some among those I have encountered today, that I may see and know them through your eyes.