Approaching Father's Day, I am writing about a Father's love. Today, a repost from the archives and at the end of the week, I will have my favorite guest ever!
Holding red handwritten letters strung together in my hand, something wells up inside me. At first, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s a mystery these words. Are they even words?
I settle on the edge of my daughter’s treasure chest filled with magical clothes that transport her to another world by the imagery of her mind. World of perfect possibility and shimmering lights at all times of the day. World of fascination and every color imaginable and unimaginable. Twirls and curtseys and princes in white horses.
Yellow princess gown lays lifeless on the floor, next to a wand and crown discarded. It was her time to leave the castle of dreams and fairytale endings. Beside this scene of abandoned beauty, I see emotion of words.
Circumstances of play shoved her out of the glistening castle in the sky to write a love letter to sister.
A sister who sometimes yells and demands and shuts her out.
A love letter of acceptance and resolve, “I hope you apologize. Sometimes you are mean. But I still love you.”
God’s faint, gentle wind billows beneath and around. Memories crash in and through. Memories of my broken inheritance of sin perfected by bad decisions and consequence ripples and is carried by the wind. I know, Lord, I have grieved you.
Responding is this mystery of love real and raw that the Prince of Peace, Creator, Mighty God departs the Holy place on high, the grandeur castle in the clouds, hanging up his unequivocal majesty to encapsulate glory in the prison of flesh and bones.
His robe of righteousness lays lifeless on the floor, next to scepter and crown discarded. (Philippians 2:8)
For a moment, He steps out of the beauty that radiates His throne and into a lost and ruined world to pen a love letter in red.
“But I still love you.”
“And I always have.”
The greatest mystery of love is revealed and evidenced in the relationship of Father and Son. The sacrifice both made for you, for me.
This Father who is Rav-Chesed, LORD Abounding in Love.
“The LORD of Lords…abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”Exodus 34:6
The sheer essence of God is His perfect, holy, abounding, fervent love.
God does not merely love, He IS love. Everything He does flows from His love.
The heart of a Father is to love.
“I have loved you with an everlasting love and drawn you with loving-kindness.”Jeremiah 31:3
The beauty of this passage is the display God’s love toward us. We like to say that love is not a feeling or love is a verb. Rather, a higher love is working through the grit and mess of relationships. However, God feels a love deeply for us.
God loves us with everlasting love, Ahab. In Hebrew this word for love means “to desire, to breathe after, to be inclined toward, to delight in.” Love is indeed a feeling and God has an affection toward us that is inconceivable and reassuring.
God’s love toward His children is also a covenant loyal promise that will never be broken because it is rooted on who HE is, not who we are.
By this unfailing, constant, merciful, unchanging, eternal love we have been redeemed. (Isaiah 63:9)
A distilled response or lack of affection will not change or disfigure God’s love toward me. Transient and wavering is my love for God, but His divine love is an anchor to my soul.
