CATALOGS

John 17: 20 – 26
I love catalogs. They may be the most perfect reading material known to man. A catalog comes in the mail for free, just the right size and shape, all shiny and filled with pictures of things I didn't know I needed, or even that these items on the pages existed. When I get them, I immediately put them on the book shelf in the bathroom leaving them there to wait for that time when I go have my morning sit down. There I can read the little articles that describe the items on the page in such a way that it makes me want to buy all of them, on every page, and it doesn't matter where I begin to read a catalog, I can start at the end, the beginning, or the middle, and a catalog can be read over and over. I really want what's on every page of a well put together catalog, the feeling can be overwhelming.
The people who make these catalogs, put them together in such a way as to make the illustrations desirable to all who would look at them.
In a way, we as Christians are God's catalogs.
We are His illustration to the world of what He has to offer. His work in our lives makes us a picture of qualities that people may not know they need or want until they see them at work in us.

20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:
23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.
26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

Jesus prayed that His followers would be unified so the world would know that God sent Him and loved them as God loved Him. When Christ is alive in us, we become examples of God’s love. We can’t manufacture love. God is the manufacturer, and we are His workmanship.
As you browse through catalogs, consider what the “catalog” of your life says about God. Do people see qualities in you that make them long for God?