Prayer: Help us to know you by your love, God. Amen.
Reading: I John 4: 19-21 (Click to read text) Stop and GROW: After reading the text, discuss/ponder the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Book of Faith questions, which are part of Camp Mount Luther's GROW Time with campers. QUESTION 1: What scares, confuses, challenges, or doesn’t make sense to me in this text? QUESTION 2: What delights me in this text or is my favorite part of the story? QUESTION 3: What stories or memories does this text stir in me? QUESTION 4: What is God up to in this text? Reflection: Two of the most misused and misunderstood words today are love and hate. Hate has digressed to social rejection and displeasure, and likewise love to mere enjoyment or excitement and both often towards material objects. Love of God, love of family, love of friends, these are places where we can have real love and experience it in return. Love requires an element of truth. When we truly love, we do so in an understanding, appreciation, and connectedness between each other. It is easy to fall quickly in love with someone or something we hardly know, but this is shallow and dies quickly. Love gets stronger with a deeper understanding. The exact opposite is true for hate. The more we understand about those we “hate” the less we are able to hate them (although they may “tick us off”). If we had a true understanding of the world we would see God in everyone. Hatred of another human is the product of ignorance towards God. You cannot truly love God without understanding what that means and seeing what God is. If you hate your brother or sister, or anyone who you know, then you don’t love god, who you don’t know. --Jack Bagby
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