January 12

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. John 1:18

I have always been intrigued that none of us know what Jesus looks like. As a child, the visual of Jesus that I received was a hippy-looking thin young man with blond hair, blue eyes and a really dreamy look on his face. Maturity, Bible study, traveling and other ways have taught me that Jesus was dark skinned, muscular (carpentry in the first century was not for wimps!) and his personality was probably one that attracted people to him. Of course, all this speculation about what Jesus looked like tells us very little about God. More essential to understanding what God is like - in actions rather than looks - is to see what Jesus is like. This would take a re-reading of all four gospels but these ten major points come to mind:

1) Loving
2) Fully present
3) Forgiving
4) Approachable
5) Understanding
6) Non-judgmental
7) Challenging
8) Healing
9) Restoring
10) Assuring

If you were to make a list (and I challenge you to do so today) it would probably be a bit different than mine. The point is that we can look to Jesus to understand God's nature in the world and with us.

Dear God; we don't know what Jesus really looked like but we do know what he was like. Help us to re-claim his (and your) traits in our lives today. Amen.