What Manner

Few of us like to admit this, so let me admit it first. When people go cold on me because of my faith, it stings more than open hostility would. Maybe something like that has happened to you. Nobody said anything cruel. The message thread simply cooled after you mentioned that you spend your weekend mornings at church, and it has stayed cool ever since.

Look at what John does with that feeling, because he does not treat it as a side issue. He stops in the middle of his thought to stare at what he is describing: "Behold, what manner of love." The Greek phrase behind "what manner" first meant something like "from what country?" It is a foreign kind of love, as if nothing we know could hold it. Then John says the warm thing and the cold thing in one breath. You are called a child of God, and "the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." He is not just comforting you. He is telling you that the two facts belong together, and that the world's coldness is evidence that you belong to the Father.

John will not leave it as comfort alone, either. Two verses later he writes, "every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

So here is what I would ask if we were sitting across a table. In the last month, were you really left out because you belong to Christ? Or were you cold to them first, and have you been calling it persecution ever since? Either way, the Father's love came first, and it is still the love that calls you His child.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 8 is Michal at the Window (2 Samuel 6:22).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna