This Love Changes Absolutely Everything
Originally posted May 25, 2013
You should know that this blog always starts with me preaching to myself. In case anyone had any doubts, I don't have it all together. I don't pretend to be right about everything. And as much as I confidently talk about God's love, I still can't even begin to wrap my mind around it. Every time I think I grasp just a little of what God's love looks like, I realize that my picture is still so frustratingly human.
But since my last post I have been turning over in my head: what does it mean to love perfectly and equally? I wrote about God's perfect love in connection with my own struggles with envy, but when I re-read it a few days later, I was more and more convinced that this love is what everything hinges on.
We know that God loves perfectly. He loves indiscriminately. He loves globally and locally. That means He deeply loves every kid that I work with at school, but He also deeply loves and cares for the guys that stand on the corner next to the liquor store who I would be uncomfortable to walk past. He loves me. And He also loves the woman in the Philippines who sewed the shirt that I'm wearing. He loves the people in war-torn nations who are struggling to survive, and He loves every sickeningly rich corporate CEO who profits from injustice.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17)
This kind of love changes absolutely everything. And if it doesn't, then I think it should.
It should change the way we interact with each other. As one unconditionally loved by God to another equally loved. It should change the way we react when someone cuts us off in traffic or gives us a dirty look in the grocery store. It should change the way we talk about someone when they aren't around. Maybe it should change the way we dress, how we spend our money, how we listen. Maybe it should change everything.
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." (John 13:34)
Is this possible? To love this perfectly in our human weakness?
I don't know. But that's the goal. To love a little more and a little better each day.
"Let all that you do be done in love." (1 Corinthians 16:14)
But it all starts with recognizing the great Love that we have received from God. Even if we only understand it in a tiny, human way. Because that is the only way we can ever understand it in this life. But what an awesome thought that God's love will always be bigger and better than we can imagine.
"..that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19 ESV)
