Day 10 - Lift Up Your Eyes

1 John 4:11-12 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.  No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

One of the key skills to teach kids about basketball is to keep your head up and to keep looking forward.  It is easy for a kid to want to keep their eye on the basketball, especially when dribbling.  By doing this they miss the opportunities to pass or score.  It is easy for all of us to keep our heads down and to only focus on what is right in front of us. Our circumstances tend to dictate what we do and we become focused on our reactions to situations more than people who live life.  

God reminds us that we are not here to merely react to our circumstances, but rather we are here to experience the love of God and to love others.  When we look up from our circumstances and we remind ourselves that God loves us unconditionally, we are free to love others.  When I get just a glimpse of God's unconditional love that says: "Even if I was a super saint and fasted for a year and prayed 3 hours a day, God couldn't love me more!"  "Even if I gave every moment of the my life feeding the hungry, God couldn't love me more!" "Even if I became the laziest couch potato the world has ever seen, God couldn't love me more or less!"  All these things might impact my life, my family, my friends, my community; but they won't impact God's love for me.  John says when we lift up our eyes and see the love of God for us, we don't have any choice but to love others.