This post is a week or so out of date. It relates to an earlier lesson, especially "Whoever serves me, must follow me, and my servant will be with me wherever I am. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him."
The interesting thing about this verse contains its relationship with 15:15 "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends;"
This is worth some meditation: am I his servant or his friend?
6 comments:
Good question, Larry ... am I his servant or his friend?
I often wonder about that, but a little differently - am I his (God's) child or his employee? :-) I'm always afraid he wants a good employee and I would rather be a beloved child, but that seems like to much to hope for.
The history of Christianity would seem to be the story of those who werea sked to be beloved children and opted for being good employeees instead.
Trouble is -- if the job is being a beloved child -- then being the absolutely best grade 4 accounts receivables clerk in the world is still not doing your job.
I love those questions like, "Am I his servant or Friend," and the answer is simply "Yes." No distiction, no duality, no contadiction, just "Yes."
We have difficulty accepting God's call to be beloved children because we were not loved perfectly. Those who have experienced love closer to perfect from their parents may be better able to accept this kind of unconditional love. Not more deserving, just more able to accept it.
Wanting to be the best 'grade 4 accounts receivables clerk' is what we do to 'earn' God's love, especially when we have learned growing up that our parents expect certain levels of achievement and we thought that meant we weren't worthy of love unless we achieved. Then ambition and fear take over where love should have been.
Meredith is right, the answer is yes. Its the whole faith/works thing -- if we accept that we are beloved we will naturally do those works without thinking. I sincerely feel that it is more important to work on acceptance of God's love than work on, well, works. We tend to get this very backwards.
The only thing I've ever come up with is love others so that they may know they can be loved, maybe that will help them accept God's love for them. I guess the corollary is that we must also work on loving ourselves, which is how we accept God's love.
Marjorie, I think you're right about the hard part for some people being the acceptance of being loved by God. That's the biggest stumbling block in my religious life.
Hello Marjorie:
Glad you dropped back in. Good to hear your groundedness.
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