A teacher asked her elementary religion class to write letters to God. A young student, Joyce, wrote, “Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I had been praying for was a puppy. Did you not hear me right?” Nan wrote, “Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love all the people in the world. There are only four people in my family, and I can never do it!”
Our verse today highlights that we have not seen or experienced God in the ways that we experience other relationships within creation. In fact, we see and experience God’s love through our relationships with friends, family, pets and our wider communities. Yet sometimes we experience brokenness, too. This is why our passage today is of such great importance to us as people of faith; it helps us to understand that it’s through God that our love is perfected, not by some superhuman strength of our own. Thanks be to God for that!
Compassionate One, grow your love in us that we might share it with a world in need. Amen. —