Day 253: Don't Worry

1 John 4; Ezra 1-2; Psalm 91

This chapter in 1 John is all about how God is love and our expression of being saved is loving others. First it tells us that "God is love." He is love and he is the ultimate expression of it. His unity with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, that perfect relationship, the service and sacrifice of Jesus, the oneness that the Holy Spirit shares with us--that is the perfect example of what love is. Secondly, we are told that "if we keep on loving others, we will stay one in our hearts with God, and he will stay one with us." This sounds a lot like the "abide in me" verses back in regular John. Love is how we remain connected with The Lord. It isn't through rituals, long prayers, fasting, giving, though all of those can help--it is through choosing to love and demonstrating devotion and compassion to God and others. Finally, it says that the reason we love is "because God loved us first. But if we say we love God and don't love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don't love the people we can see? The commandment that God has give us is: 'Love God and love each other!'" Since there is absolutely nothing God needs, nothing we can do for him, we can show our love for him by acting out love towards others. This is a big challenge because there are a lot of people in our lives that we deem 'unloveable' or 'hard to love.' Imagine God looking at his creation: are we easy to love with all of the ways we have hurt creation, mistreated one another, distort who He is? We are so unloveable at times, but God still saved us through his son's sacrifice. And so because of that, we seek to love those around us, even those who are difficult to love.

Psalm 91 shows that God can be trusted to protect us. When we put our faith in him, we can believe that he will watch over us. This doesn't mean that we won't have trouble in this life, but that we will be saved from things that will destroy our souls because God holds our spirits for eternity. The psalmist writes that we don't "need to worry about dangers at night or arrows during the day." Worrying is a big struggle for a lot of people, as well as myself. We worry about our future, about our families, about what people think of us; but this passage reminds us that because of God, because of his promise to never leave us, because if we have faith in him and his son we are saved, we don't need to worry about the things of this world. The worst that can happen is that our physical bodies die. And I know that seems like a crazy stupid thought; but we are going to die eventually, and all that means is that we get to start our eternity in heaven with The Lord sooner. This life that we are living now can be painful and depressing, why would we want to prolong it or hang on to it for more than we have to, when a life of peace and complete joy awaits us? I pray that we can learn to trust God in this life and not worry about the troubles ahead. God's got it. He will rescue us when the time comes.