The Start to the New Year: How it’s Been the Toughest of my Life!
These past couple of months have been some of the toughest for me and my family. We’ve had to cope with losing two amazing, loving women in our lives. It’s hit me really hard, more than when my mom sat my sisters and me down to share the news about our dad. I’ve been feeling a lot of bitterness and sadness, but I’ve also felt God’s love from the people that he’s put in our lives and the its that support that I’ve felt that has been giving me the strength to not fall. God’s also been pulling me toward 1st John, chapter 4, verses 7-21.
“Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.”
John the Apostle speaks of God's love for his children through his son, Jesus Christ. The comfort I’ve felt from this story has been a huge relief, and it's also given me a sense of peace that when they opened their eyes in their spiritual bodies, the first person they saw was the Son of God, Jesus Christ.