My mother is 96 and doing great physically but her mind is showing signs of slippage. With each visit I show her pictures of my adult children. And though she watched them from infancy to 12+ years or age while my wife and I went to work, she now has to really strain to recognize them and remember their names.
Recently John 1: 10-11 really jumped off the pages at me. It states Jesus was “in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him”. Amazing that we don’t recognize the one who made the world. Aside from this, one of the most striking accounts of our lack of recognition of God is in Exodus when Moses is up on Mt. Sinai receiving the 10 Commandments. With earthquakes occurring, surrounded by thunder and lightning, smoke, fire, and the sound of trumpets (Ex 19:16-20) the people down below are making the statue of a golden calf to worship (Ex 32). Really?
Of course God loves us in spite of our denseness and goes to the extreme extent of sending us his son so we can see him in the flesh, learn from him, and see him die and resurrect. But even in this we learn that: “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him”. In the example of my mother, it would be like her visiting her grandkids and them rejecting her. How sad that would be. These children she nurtured and raised and sacrificed for go and turn their backs on her after they grow up.
When I think of this I am amazed at God’s love, grace, mercy and patience with us. We don’t recognize him and we don’t receive him. Yet he never gives up on us. Never.
- While we were still sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:8)
- He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9b)
- See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)
Barnabas Man 