Have you ever thought “why am I the way I am” or, “why do I do or say things that way”? I suspect it is a question many of us have asked, I know I have, until I look back at my parents, my friends, the people who surround me and my experiences then it starts to make sense. You see, we are or maybe better said, we tend to reflect the people who surround us and the examples we see.
Think about the meals you prepare. Some are filled with nostalgic reflections of a moment in your childhood or in your life, aren’t they? Or, the funny sayings or the way you pronounce something, I suspect, if you go back into your youth, you will find someone offering the same phrase or twisting their tongue around a word in the same funny way that you do. Children follow their parents in service in the military, college selections and professions. We often do things because we have witnessed someone else do it before us, do it first.
We see witness to this in. John 4:19 which reads, “We ourselves love now because He, God, loved us first.”
We know love because we have witnessed God’s love all around us from our very first breath. In the creation that surrounds us from the streams of living water to the mountain’s majesty, the birds and flowers, the air that breath, the trees that offer shade. God’s love can be witnessed throughout creation.
(Enter midnight infomercial) But wait there’s more! We know God’s love through Jesus Christ, through the words that he taught, offering that the love of God and the love of neighbor are the two most vital commands we are to follow. Loving us to his death and beyond, overcoming death and sharing that victory with us, that those things that hold us to this world no longer hold their grip on us.
Finally, we witness love in the companion that God sent to be by our side in all things, in the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is God’s presence, next to us and within us that we may never be alone. In the darkest of valleys and in the highest of mountain peaks we know Emanuel, God with us, holding us and loving us where we are.
Consider this, we spend a lifetime seeking unconditional love, that we will never have to change, yet God loves us unconditionally and because of that we want to change. It is that very love that we have seen in all that surrounds us. It may have been parents or grandparents, teachers or coaches, friends or partners. So, now that you have been a witness to that unconditional, meet you where you are love I challenge you to find situations, to find opportunities, to find people around you to begin to share and teach that love to another, showing them not just who you are but whose you are.
Prayer: “Thank you Lord for the love you have shared with me in my life. As I have witnessed that love allow me now to share it to those I encounter. I pray that you hold me tightly and guide me gently in your will and in your ways. Amen”