Devotional by Scott Hicks

1 John 4:8
New International Version (NIV)
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Many of us “church-goers” spend the majority of our adult lives, in some form or another, pursuing the will of God. By that I mean that we strive to obey the laws and message of our belief system of choice.
Once I believed that folks found this will primarily by serving others. I observed the work of charity and as a Christian recognized it as the core message and example of Jesus.
How then could those who worked so diligently often seem to look upon those they served as objects of charity rather than equals? When Jesus healed the leper or the blind or the possessed did he in some deep part of his psyche consider himself an organism of a higher or more profound presence?
If we are to truly know God can we for the briefest moment allow ourselves to look upon any one of our fellows as different from ourselves?
I know in my heart that on some level, I do. I try to push aside my prejudices and human ideas yet no matter how kind or loving I may feel, deep inside, if I am brutally honest, I sometimes see myself as a servant of those who are in some way less.
Do we not speak and direct our attentions toward those LESS fortunate? We say that we serve those who HAVE less. Is that an honest appraisal or is it not truer that at our core we feel that we serve those who ARE somehow, well … less?
Here lies the difficulty, or obstacle if you will, in leaving service as the driving force on our path to God. We can serve and we should. “Faith without works is dead,” yet if we serve and do not go to the Father in our silent depths then we only build a bridge of straw to a fantasy that is our own materialism. We only make ourselves feel like we have done God’s will. We do not know God.
When I strive to be still and put aside the thoughts of this world, I open myself to the essence of the Father that is beyond self. If we are “created in the image of God” then we are of God just as we are. Our consciousness only impedes His truth.
I want to know God; but if I reach out my hand and see it as just my own then I do not serve God, I serve myself. If the hand that holds out the bread is human … then there is no truth in it. It is only truth if I “know” the hand as the hand of God.
I have come to awareness that it is in the stillness, in the darkness, that is a world beyond the conscious recognition of my surroundings, that I open myself to the power and grace that is the Father.
I can only hope that if, each day as I continue to go there, I might discover in the silent darkness that I no longer exist as I have been. I might discover that it was not me who served another. It is God in his omnipotent reality absorbing the essence of all service. It is God’s love.
God is love; therefore we are love … forever and ever,

Amen.

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