No Need To Prove Yourself

3 Jan

See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.  (1 Jn 3:1)

As I was growing up, I would often think that I was “fatherless”.  My dad, God rest his soul, was a good man and was devoted to his family.  However, his idea of devotion was to work hard to provide for us but not necessarily be present to us.

When he got home, he would work around the house or on the cars, or in the garden.  If we were involved in sports, theatre, musicals, band, et cetera, we would not see him at our events.  My mother would try to attend, but my dad would be “conspicuously absent”.

Sadly, even though I “understood” why he was not at my events, I did not really understand.  I would wonder what it would take to get him to come.

When he would say no, I would wonder what it was about me that kept him away.  Didn’t he love me?  You know those kinds of questions we often go through when we are growing up and our parents, for one reason or another, may not be present to us.

With God, that just is not so.

As St. John wrote to the early Christian community, there was nothing that we needed to do to get God’s attention or to get God to love us.  We were already His children.  As His children, He would go to any length for us and He promised that He would always be with us.

As we have reflected upon earlier, God always keeps His promises.

We are God’s children.  We do not have to worry about what to do to get Him to notice us.  All we have to do is bask in the glow of His love.

FAITH ACTION:  In your prayer today, ask God for the grace that you need to live as His child without fear or shame in this world of ours.