Father, you are greater than anyone or anything in all the universe. For you created all that is, all that was, and all that is to come. There is no one like you. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You are full of truth and love. In your great love for us, you sent us Jesus, full of grace and truth and love. You made him the exact representation, the exact expression of your being. He is the truth about you and the truth about man. He was with you in eternity past and with you in the beginning when the sun, moon and stars were formed. He was with you when the world was formed. In fact, it was he who formed them. He was with you when you and he formed man out the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life so that the first man became a living being. You and he were together as you walked and talked with the first man in the garden in the cool of the day. So, Jesus understands you and he understands man. He knows your nature intimately because he has participated in it from time immemorial. He knows man because he made man. No one else has this knowledge. And this knowledge comes not just from intellect, but from experience. He experiences you continually because he is in constant communion with you, and he, through your Spirit, whom he sent to us, experiences all that we experience as human beings. For he placed your Spirit, his Spirit, within us, and the Spirit sees, hears, smells, touches, tastes all that we experience. He also experiences our relationships with each other. He is keenly aware of all that is in our hearts, and he lives there, not displacing our hearts, but making us fully human because we have an “empty” place in us that only he can fill. You made us to be not whole unless we are indwelt by your Spirit. To be fully human is to be filled with your Spirit, your desires, your aspirations, your thoughts, your ways of thinking. To be fully human is to love like Jesus loved. He loves us just as he experiences your love for him. And his command to us is to love others, just as you love him, passing along that eternal, inexorable, unfathomable love with which he loves us. He takes great delight in each one of us in whom his Spirit dwells. He paid the price for our rebellion against you, and now we are your precious children in whom you delight. You can’t wait to show us what is just around the corner in our lives and in the life to come because it is so good, we would be scarcely able to believe it. I know you have loved me that way. Time and time again, you have shown me your goodness, grace, mercy and love. Time and time again, you have shown me your goodness. You have always provided for me, often in ways that I could not have fathomed. Time and time again, you have filled me with your Spirit and loved others through me in ways that I could not have predicted. Time and time again, you have put words in my mouth, the exact words that another needed to hear to encourage them. Time and time again, you have shown yourself to me in ways so varied that I could not have predicted or even imagined. Yes, you know me completely and you take great delight in me. Yes, you know me completely, and you use who you made me to be to serve others, loving them the way you love me. Thank you! There is truly no one like you! Amen.
