Being Children of God

In today's first reading, 1 John 3: 1-3, St. John reminds us that we are children of God.  I am a child of God now, St. John states, and what I "shall be has not yet been revealed. [I] do not know that when it is revealed [I] shall be like [God], for [I] shall see [God] as [God] is. Everyone who has this hope based on [God] makes [him/herself] pure as [God] is pure."

Wow!  Do I, do you, really grasp the depth of St. John's statement. First of all, do we really understand the reality of being God's child?  We know what it means to be the child of Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so! But do we grasp what it means to be a child of God. And if we are God's children, and we are, then we are also God's heirs!   The  inheritance that God has stored away for us, so to speak, is life with God for all eternity in the Kingdom from which Jesus came down to earth and to which He returned following His resurrection.   Second of all, St. John states, that "when it is revealed we shall be like [God], for we shall see [God] as [God] is."  We know that, in His creation of each one of us, we are made in God's image and likeness. From St. John's statement, our being made in the image and likeness of God, it seems,  is amplified/magnified, or could we say, glorified in eternity, when we are given new glorified bodies. And there is no way now to fathom that reality here on earth.  Thirdly, John states that anyone "who has this hope based on [God] makes [him/herself] pure as [God] is pure!"  My prayer is that we do just that with the grace of God at work within us!