02 Jul Beloved: How the Gospel Makes Us Whole.

Earlier this spring, at a lower moment, I had a conversation with a trusted mentor.

He listened, reflected, and said in response something extremely wise and extraordinarily gracious.

And for a moment, it was like the clouds parted and a ray of sunshine fell upon a clouded part of my inner life.

The response I experienced, if you boiled it all down, was this: You are God’s Beloved.

Now, I don’t know if you have ever had a word spoken to you like that or experienced a conversation like that, in which during and even afterward you felt…a little more like that, a little more put back together, a little more seen, a little more…whole.

There’s an amazing little book in the New Testament written by the apostle John that is quite a lot about that. John’s letter, in the book we call 1 John, is like a conversation with a trusted mentor, in which, over and over, he helps us experience something he calls us, a name he has for and calls the people of God:

Beloved.

“Beloved, let us…” he writes.

“Beloved, I am writing…” he says.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now…” he affirms.

And from that vantage point, John lays out a variety of resources to help us better understand and become more of what we already are: things like (what he calls) fellowship; truth; multigenerational community; the new birth; the exclusivity of Christ, and, of course, the love of God.

In short, this letter calls us to embrace these resources to become and to be a people who are whole. Put back together. Complete. Or, again, to use John’s word for it…beloved.

And right now, who couldn’t use more of that?

Come and see how that can happen as we travel through 1 John for the next six weeks. The Gospel can make us beloved and whole!

Morgan