Prayer Practice
Breath Prayer – Take 2-3 minutes today to pray a simple breath prayer. Get somewhere quiet and relaxing. Breathe in deeply, and then breathe out fully. As you breathe in, ask God to fill you with His presence, grace, love, peace, etc. Consider using the list of spiritual fruit in Galatians 5:22-23. As you breathe out, offer to God the things you need Him to take from you – sin, doubt, shame, anxiety, fear, etc. Pray this way for just a few minutes, trusting God to work, and then begin reading today’s Scripture.
DAILY READING
REFLECTION
Nothing without love
by Kelsey Bacon
This passage is one of my absolute favorite chunks of scripture in the entire Bible. It's not just because it so beautifully describes what God's love for us is like, but that it reassures us that we are in his hands, and that his love is not only here for us now, but it's coming for us even more fiercely than we can imagine.
When God says all the things that love is, I feel I can let out a breath. I know that I struggle with patience, but in my shortcomings, love is patient. I know that I struggle to trust, and in my humanness, love trusts. I know that I am self-seeking, and in my sinfulness, love is pure. And love never fails. When I fail, when others fail, when the world fails around me, God does not, and his love never ceases or wavers.
The second-to-last verse of this passage has always fascinated me: "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." I imagine that this kind of fullness is the uninterrupted love of a sinless world, a completed world. Now we are separated, and can only know God to such a degree. But how sweet and joyous will it be when all has come to its fullness and we can truly know this love in the way God intended? Truly know God in the way he intended?
I think this feeling is best described in a quote from the very last Chronicles of Narnia book, The Last Battle. At the end of the book, the characters cross from the old Narnia into what they realize to be a richer, more beautiful Narnia--the true Narnia--as they all return home to Aslan for good. One of the characters says this, "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we have loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this...Come further up, come further in!"
We belong somewhere else, somewhere where God's love is fully felt and fully known. But until we're there, even God's love on this side of heaven is better than anything we can offer. It always protects, trusts, hopes, and preserves, and it never fails.
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