A Devotion on 1 John 3:1

Written for Georgia Tech CCF's Spring Retreat. 

A Devotion. 

Text: 1 John 3:1

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! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 

It would be worth it for you to just take a moment and breathe, if you can.  Just take a deep inhale and exhale and take a long look around you.  Slow down your mind and calm your eyes that are pouring over these words.  Go ahead.  Look up.  Take your time.  

Did you enjoy what you saw?  Did you smile when you saw old friends and new friends spread out around the lake and laid out on that vast lawn?  Did you take in the sky? Did you marvel out how deep and wide it is?  

Did you see the people around you and did you make a grateful list of the talents they have, of the incredible gifts that they have been given to them?  Did you take in the beauty of the creation that is inside of you? 

How often do you gaze into a full textbook or an empty checking account and then get lost in dreams of being a child again?  When do you imagine yourself laid out on the green grass, trying to make sense of the white clouds scattered like cotton above you? 

We are forever children of God.  We have been given the moon and the stars and the sun to give us light and the earth to give us a home and everything in it to sustain us.  We have been given a family- a family that will never dissolve, that will never divorce, that will never die.  We have been given the hope of a life that is led without shame or fear- if we only decide to see it. If we only choose to believe it.  If we only open up our hearts to the love that is already there, knocking on the doors of our lives.

We have the chance to be kids forever.  Sure, we are going to fall down and we are going to scrape our knees.  We are going to get into silly fights over little things and we are certain to cry over spilt milk once or twice more before this whole play has reached its end.  Never-the-less, we have the love of a God who has it in him to call us our "Father".   He has the guts.  He has the nerve.  He has the sheer desire to love us as a good father loves his kids from the rising of the sun to the place it makes its bed. 

Meanwhile, the world around us is a glimpse of what is to come.  The lavished love of God is around you- just look up.  Just breathe it in.  The music of the band playing. The smiles of comfort and love and joy from the community around you.  All of this, this beautiful landscape of blue and green and flesh and blood, they are the love of a God who is pursuing your heart.  All we have to do is open up our eyes and see.