You were supposed to love me

I listened in my chair to the "Pray as you go" app about the family of Jacob in Genesis and the brothers conspiring first to kill their father's favorite - Joseph - and then to sell him into slavery.  It is another picture of a dysfunctional family - the Bible is full of them and so are our lives.  It is a common story.

I thought about how the brothers must have felt when their father favored Joseph.  And clearly favored.  Don't we all want to be the favorite?  Or if not that - don't we want to be loved?  I pictured their anger - at their father, really and their unspoken plaintive cries - "You were supposed to love me."  Which translated into murderous rage.  

I know there are families where one child is the clear favorite - or the hero.  And I did not come from that and hopefully, my daughters and grandchildren don't experience favoritism from me.  But I do know  - from the end of a marriage - that sadness - "You were supposed to love me."  Promises were made and broekn.  That's a common story too.

I also know about church hurt - when members hurt each other or feel neglected or ignored by the pastor.  We preach about love and how we are trying to be a place of love where everyone is accepted and yet I know there are some who don't experience that at all and think "You were supposed to love me."

The text from the devotional today was 1 John 4: 7-11

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

 What I know to be true is that it is easy to talk about love but it doesn't always happen the way we want it to - whether in marriage, family or church.  I am convinced that the answer begins with our relationship with God who "loves us SO MUCH"  

You can talk about it but somehow, there has to be an experience of it.  to KNOW God. That is what morning prayer is for, or a walk on the beach, or time with scripture, or talking with a beloved friend or spiritual guide, or listening to music, sitting in silence in a garden,  or hiking up a mountain  or   being with a gradnchild ......  or.......or.......or

This call to love is an immense responsibility.  People's lives are shaped by whether they receive love  - as children, in a marriage, in a church - for the good or for  bad.  My prayer for all people is that we might know how loved we are by our creator, the divine lover.  That is how we can begin to love one another.

I know I have put this in this blog before, but it is very fitting here

Let Your God Love You (by Edwina Gateley)

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God—
Love you.