"What's Love Got to Do With It?" - Day 16

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about love. We all use the word in our everyday vocabulary. Our society is obsessed with love. Our world revolves around seeking to be loved. Singers like Tina Turner rhetorically ask, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" We all know love has everything to do with it. As believers, we have the amazing passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that expounds on all of the virtues of love.

Still, I wonder about what God's love looks like. I mean I know that God's love looks like salvation, John 3:16. I am intimate with that concept. There is a big part of me that strives to be worthy of that saving love. This is, of course, impossible but I still try.

It's the other part of love from God that I really struggle with though. The part of God simply loving me for no good reason. The blessing part of love. What does it look like for God to love me? I forget and I need Him to remind me. He's teaching me that one day it might look like a sunset hanging over the Katy Freeway. Or maybe, it looks like a hug from a deaf man at Randalls. Possibly it looks like a tree on the bayou that is disfigured and yet majestic.

Henri Nouwen in his book Life of the Beloved beautifully expresses it from God in this way: “I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you in infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse…yes, even your child….wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.”

Today's Prayer - Pray that we will embrace this beautiful, pure, and perfect blessing of God's love. Pray also for God to bring a preschool worker to Elevation that will be a blessing to our children.