“My dear friends, let us love each other, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.”

Someone once told me that to love another was to acknowledge the deepest respect for that person and to recognize that God dwelled within him or her. A few years later, a new acquaintance told me that she had accepted her best friend’s proposal of marriage because she felt more respect for him than she had ever felt for anyone else. At the time of our conversation, the woman and her husband had been married approximately twenty years – that was over thirty years ago. A few days ago, her husband made the comment to me that when he looked into her face he saw the face of God. How kind of John to have been thinking of my friends when he wrote this passage of scripture nearly 2000 years ago!

DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, THANK YOU FOR SENDING THESE TWO CHILDREN OF YOURS INTO MY LIFE. THE LIFE THEY LEAD AS THEY SO GENEROUSLY SHARE THE LOVE YOU HAVE GRANTED THEM IS SUCH A JOY TO SEE AND IS AN INSPIRATION TO THOSE AROUND THEM. IN JESUS’ NAME I PRAY YOUR CONTINUED BLESSING ON THEM. AMEN.

-Shared by Charlotte Batts