But of God

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. – John 1:12-13

I have a lot I should be doing today; I am having trouble getting my effort rolling forward.  I don’t really have anything to say, but I read this verse last night, and it was like taking a deep breath of cool, clean air after eight hours in a smoke-filled, overheated room.  Maybe it will do the same thing for someone else.

To think that we have a right to become children of God probably causes different reactions.  Some might think, well, of course, we are all God’s children.  Others might shrug it off as ridiculous fantasy.  Our beloved and mystically inclined brother John should not be lightly dismissed.   

While I am probably more in tune personally with the resolute canniness of Thomas (So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” -- Eeyore would be proud), John seems to surpass his fellow Evangelists in conveying a child-like wonder, an almost stunned amazement in the presence of Christ.  He reminds me of the priests as they first carried the Ark into the Temple, when ... the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

To be a child of God, a child of the King, really -- doesn’t it seem that every other ambition would look pretty weak in comparison?  I have stood in humble little churches among humble little, cast-off people as they sang:  Oh, yes, oh, yes!  I’m a child of the King / His royal blood now flows in my veins / And I, who was wretched, thank God, now can sing / Oh, yes, oh, yes!  I’m a child of the King. 

There is a cynical part of my mind, maybe worse than cynical, that responds to a scene like that and thinks that humans are always best at deceiving themselves.  To look around at the dust and the squalor and contrast that with the words those people say can make a person laugh scornfully, weep in pity, or turn one’s face up and join in. 

The birth of a child of God does not come about because of DNA.  The right is not limited to a family or a tribe or a race.  It is not determined by earthly parents or the circumstances of a person’s natural origin.  God looks down and says -- I believe -- to all, “You can be My child.”  Some do not seem to hear, some hear and turn away, some are dragged away, but some turn their eyes away from the world and look upon their Father’s face.