“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” (John 1:10-11, KJV)
What a tragedy! All that work on a perfectly good creation. All that design of very complex beings. All that time. All the prophets sent ahead. “…and his own received him not.” You know, there is a layer to his design that is richer and deeper than merely the fact that he could create such complex beings that live and move and know and reproduce and can command a whole world. It even goes beyond making them clean and worthy of eating of the tree of life that they may have life without end. The two greatest commandments (from which all the others all flow) center on learning to love another. One to love God and the other; someone “other”. Our neighbor. Of course, anyone who has begun to learn what love is and what love actually means, begins to learn to know them. Their likes and dislikes. Their voice. What they believe in and trust in. Things that draw you closer and things that push you away. To “receive him not” is to reject that layer of the relationship that goes richer and deeper than all the complexity of everything else that was made. To worry about wrongs or bad decisions that you’ve made on your own or out among the “others” is mere child’s play compared with what he made us capable of. We, unlike the technology, the stories, and the art that we make; are capable of “love”! Something even we have no idea about until we see how he loves us. We learn more of this “love” as we stop trying to manage all the things that actually grow our love, trust, and faith in him as we surrender them to him.
Now tell me of life without end with Jesus! Now I begin to see the value of that relationship that is built day by day in trust, faith, humility, and much more. Now I begin to see Him for the love that he wholly embodies. We could not recognize him before, but when we hear his voice and take his hand; we receive him with a whole heart. In the words of Alfred Henry Ackley, “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart!”
“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3, KJV)