Daily Manna · Day 8 · January 8
What Manner
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.”
We do not often admit this, so let me admit it to you first. The cold surprised me, and it stung more than open hostility would have. Nobody said anything cruel to you either. The thread simply cooled after you mentioned where you spend your weekend mornings, and it has stayed cool since.
I want you to see what John does with that, because he does not treat it as a side effect. He stops mid-thought to stare at what he is describing: Behold, what manner of love. The phrase carries a sense of what country is this from, what foreign kind, as though the category will not hold it. And then he says the warm thing and the cold thing in a single breath. You are called a child of God, and the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. He is not consoling you. He is telling you the two facts belong together, and that the second one is evidence for the first.
He will not leave it as comfort either. Two verses on: 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 actually not recognised, or were you cold first and have been calling it persecution ever since?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 8 is Michal at the Window (2 Samuel 6:22).