Thursday, October 18, 2007

God's dearly loved children

I think an important part of our lives in Jesus in this world is for us to acknowledge God's word to us that we in Jesus are his dearly loved children, and then live like it.

Grace is needed in all of life, both in our individual responsibilities as well as our lives together as God's people. If we would just stop and realize that we're all siblings, all of us who belong to Jesus. Then, just as we're loved by God in Christ, dearly loved, so we're to love each other.

This means forgiveness, ongoing forgiveness. Even covering over a multitude of sins, which love- as we love each other deeply- does. It sometimes means putting up with each other; there are certainly unlikeable characteristics or habits of us all. It certainly means holding nothing against a sister or brother. And if there is a problem, praying about it and going to the person to gently resolve it.

If we can catch something of this and really begin to live it out, surely this will be a testimony to the world that we have something that is at least genuine in our lives and experience. And remembering this can be a big help to us as well, to help us live this out in the first place.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

thank you.
this was lovely.

Ted M. Gossard said...

Nancy,
We need to keep growing in this and not let up. But it does seem that at certain times there are setbacks in it.