Make me a moon...

This morning, as I was having a personal devontion time, again I was impressed by the description the Bible has of God. The simpliest, purest, definition of God is found in I John 4:16- "...God is love." Imagine that. God's very essence, his entire make-up is love. We often think of God as some celestial being sitting somewhere up in the heavens pulling strings or causing things to happen here on earth. The reality is that God doesn't ever manipulate, he doesn't ever force his will, he doesn't ever "cause" against our free will. Instead, he's here, always all around us, perfect in love, perfect in forgiveness, perfect in justice, but perfect in mercy... If we accept the Scriptures as holy and true then we know that we cannot look upon God in his perfection and live (see Exodus 33: 18-23). It's like trying to look into the sun, (only many times brighter) and burning out our eyes because the glory is too great. But we can still experience the sun, for it is all around us, giving light and warmth. We are aware of it without having to look upon it. Likewise, at night, when the sun is not directly upon us, we still see and benefit from it, for the moon is a pale reflection of the glory of the sun. It has no source power of its own, outside of the sun's reflection, but in our night it is the brightest of all the heavenly bodies... God's love is like sunshine; even if we can't look upon it we can feel it, we can experience it, we can know its always there...

I pray that when I am gone from this earth people don't think of me as a good man, or a prayer warrior, or even a godly man; I pray that the impression I leave behind is that I reflected God's love to those in my world... Lord make me your moon...