Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be born in a different time? I used to think it would be cool to be a young man in the 1880’s, out in the wild west where the fastest gun was the one who won the girl. Of course I wouldn’t be rude about it, I would only shoot and kill those who needed killing. And I wouldn’t go looking for trouble, no sir, but, sadly, it would often find me and I would have to defend my woman or my land or even my baby cow, from some ornery critter who would want to harm them. And, yes, I would have to shoot them, although never more than once because one shot through their blackened hearts would be all the shooting that would need to happen. Sometimes, if an ornery critter had some hope of becoming good, I would only shoot the gun out of their hands so as to give them chance for a new day. But the common denominator in all of these exchanges would be good winning over evil, and shooting happening.
As I have aged and become more and more dependent on my contact lenses though, I’m thinking the wild west might have been too dusty. And of course, I don’t think they had quite perfected the whole piece of plastic in the eye thing so I probably would have had to wear thick glasses which would seriously hamper the mystique of a dashing western guns man. And, have you seen some of that wild west? I’ve driven through some pretty rough looking desert places at 70 miles an hour in an air conditioned car and it seemed awfully intense to me. I can’t imagine riding a horse through that.
I’ve also thought about what it would be like to have been born a Kennedy or Rockefeller or a Hilton – all that prestige and money and power. But then you see what has happened to most of these folks and they don’t seem to be very happy, I must be better off. In fact, I am very pleased with my family. Both my parents are great, and there are many great relatives throughout both sides of the family tree. My siblings had a robust process of distributing harassment and punishment; all in all a great childhood!
So while sometimes we might consider or daydream about being in a different time or in different circumstances, look at what we get to compare to; being born of God. Ok, while it would be really cool to be born a Roman Gladiator, come on! Let’s compare that to being born of God – Creator of All Things!!!! Not even close!
On the subject of being abnormally born, let’s look at 1 John chapter 5 to see what more John has to say about it: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” (verse 1).
What proceeds the condition of being born of God? Believing that Jesus is the Christ. Does this mean that God doesn’t love a person unless they believe that His Son is the Holy One? No. God is love and He loves everyone of us just as much as the other. This is hard for us to accept as we don’t have this capacity. Love for us is too often dependent upon who the person is and how they behave. God loves us all just the same. This shouldn’t sound like it’s a discounted or cheap love because He couldn’t possibly love each one of us more than He does right now.
Sometimes we hear couples who have been married for years and years talk about how their love has grown over the time they have had together. This is awesome, but it’s not how God works. He loves us completely right now, there is no more room for Him to love us more. If this makes you feel bad like you can’t improve on it, please don’t feel that way, because we can learn to love Him more. We can grow closer to Him and our hearts can become more like His. This will deepen and strengthen our relationship with Him continually.
