Thank you for loving us
Norah Summers
February 02, 2025
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1 John 4: 7-21 (GNT)
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. 10 This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.
11 Dear friends, if this is how God loved us, then we should love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in union with us, and his love is made perfect in us.
13 We are sure that we live in union with God and that he lives in union with us, because he has given us his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and tell others that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If we declare that Jesus is the Son of God, we live in union with God and God lives in union with us. 16 And we ourselves know and believe the love which God has for us.
God is love, and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union with them. 17 Love is made perfect in us in order that we may have courage on the Judgment Day; and we will have it because our life in this world is the same as Christ's. 18 There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out all fear. So then, love has not been made perfect in anyone who is afraid, because fear has to do with punishment.
19 We love because God first loved us. 20 If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen. 21 The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love others also.
I am writing this in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
There is a service every evening (and one morning) each in a different church. I’m not able to go to them all, but I am so grateful that the opportunity is there. Everyone is remarking how good it is to be together, how welcome we have been made to feel.
Unity is not uniformity, as we are reminded –
what riches we have in our diversity!
Love transcends difference.
Love is bigger than we are.
Love is from God, and God is love.
God’s love is eternal,
there for us before we were born,
there for us through our lives,
through good times and bad,
through other people,
through the wonders of creation.
For more on living together in unity read Psalm 133.
Prayer:
Loving God, thank you that you first loved us,
showed us your love through Jesus,
showed us how to love you,
showed us how to love each other.
Loving God, accept our gratitude and our love
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