For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.
1 John 5:3-4
As the Level 2 Atrium reflected on this passage, we looked at the Bibles in our class and saw the heading on this section was "Victory Over the World". It is just after a section called, "God is Love", which reminds us about the commandment to love God and love each other. The children felt that our passage reflects both, in that if you love God you will obey his commandments and that is done, in part, by loving each other. You can show your love for God by doing what he tells you to do. This passage says his commandments are "not burdensome", while our translation similarly said "His commandments are not hard to follow". We thought unfortunately that the commandment to show love and do the right thing is actually NOT always easy to do. Society makes it hard to follow God's commandments sometimes. Then after we talked about it, we said it should be easy if we choose to make it easy. We can make it easier when we learn more about how to follow God's commandments by reading the Bible and praying. It is more important to do what God says than to think things like money and status are more important. The children said sometimes you have to go against what your friends say or think in order to follow God. The promise that God's love will conquer the world should encourage us. We thought that it is pretty amazing that we can be part of this when we show God's love to each other. No matter whether you are a child or an adult, you have the special chance to show God's love in the world, so let's all do our best.
Level II Atrium
