Purity

 Consider the quality of love God has bestowed on us that we are named children of God.  Thus we are!  And just as the world does not know or understand, much less have a relationship with Him, we do!  

Beloved, we are God's children, in more than name.  It is our destiny, though he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears.  We do know we will be like him because we will truly see him as he really is.

This being our expectation, we will keep ourselves pure, just as he is pure.

1 John 3:1-3

Purity - a set apart set of behaviors.  What does it mean to put away distractions and prepare for Jesus' presence?  Purity seems hard to pursue:  pulling away from the world's demands, preparing to enter the presence of Jesus.  

The Jews would do outward exercises.  Oils and teas?  Water and soap?  What stripping and anointing will cause me to be pure?  I first thought evil was the problem, but maybe busyness is the real problem.  Distractions.  Shiny things. Worry.  The world's agenda.

Is it about strictness and censure or an awakening that causes all worldly attachments to fall away?  

This makes me think of Step 11 of the Twelve Steps:  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

Conscious contact.  An awakening to the presence of God in all things and the possibility of the Kingdom of Heaven to be present now.  Of all the things I have ever been in pursuit, this is the hardest.  In some ways, it is less tangible than worldly pursuits.  In other ways, it is the greatest reality to which I can hold.  Conscious contact.  Get "woke" to the possibility that I can be prepared to seek Christ in this day and in his future coming.  Might I miss the coming if I haven't sought it in the day I hold?

To seek out purity is to stay "woke" to the truth of the coming King.  All other worldly matters are either vehicles to ride into his presence or be discarded.