A kindergarten teacher gave all of her students a piece of drawing paper and some crayons and told them to draw a picture of their favorite person. She was walking around the room, and came up to one young boy’s desk where he was concentrating hard on the drawing he was creating. She asked him, “who are you drawing a picture of?” “I’m drawing a picture of God,” replied the boy. “But, no one knows what God looks like!” exclaimed the teacher. The boy calmly laid his crayon on the desk, looked up at the teacher, and said, “They will when i’m through with this picture!”.
While that is just a cute story, it does illustrate a point – and that is that no one knows what God looks like, but we can all imagine. The Bible even tells us in 1 John 4:10-12, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
It is true that no one knows what God looks like. However, as the verses mentioned remind us, when people see us and the way we live and act, they should see a “reflection” of what God looks like. We show what God “looks like” through our actions. When we love others, even those who are hurtful, mean, and rude to us, when we love complete strangers, and when we love unconditionally, people will notice something completely different in us than what is in the world. The world only “loves” those who love it. Or a lot of times it seems, the world only loves those who it can get something out of, and as soon as they’re not “getting” something in return, they stop “loving”. That’s NOT the kind of love we should have.
The Bible tells us God loved us so much that even when we were sinners and undeserving of His love, He still sent His only SON to DIE for us! And if God loves us that much, we should love Him and love others in return. God’s love for us in unconditional. Our love for others should be the same. Now, obviously, there are going to be people whom we have a personal love for, like our family and friends, and that is a close love. But, what it means is that we should have a “love” for everyone. That love is shown by the way we treat others, the way we react to others, and the way we even go out of our way to help others.
1 Corinthians 3:13 reminds us, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Reflect God’s love toward others in the way you live. That should be the “picture” they see of God!