Take a moment to refresh, refocus, and refine your faith.
Jesus, thank you for living the life of a social outcast. You empathize with the struggles of living in community with others and with the struggles of being misunderstood and marginalized by that community. No matter where I stand with people, you’ve been there and you know what it feels like. And somehow you work the pains and disappointments of those experiences into bonds connecting your heart and mine. You transform my relational hurts into healing insights into the love for me that led you to the cross. Thank you for living and dying for me so that no matter what, we’ll always have each other. I love you. Amen.
John 1:9-13
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.