This year is the third year I've been given the privilege of joining our church's advent devotion team. I will only be posting my weekly writings, but I will be posting a link to the devotional in its entirety as there are some wonderful words of encouragement from numerous other writers I know will bless many hearts. (Of note, I wrote this devotional about three months ago, hence today is actually nine months exactly since our little Abigail left this world for Heaven. It's funny how the Lord uses your own words to remind you of truth when your heart is breaking.)
I find myself struggling to pen words for this week’s topic: love. I’m sitting here trying to formulate something sensible regarding the love of God while at the same time feeling my heart is shattered in a million pieces because in three days it will be six full months since I’ve held my youngest daughter in my arms. Six months she’s been held by the One whose love I’m attempting to write about. Six months I’ve been experiencing his love in unrequested ways as he binds up this broken heart. And I wonder, “how do I even begin to capture any essence of his love in one page of human words? I cannot. Whatever I come up with falls short.
There is no love apart from the Father (1 John 4:16). He IS love. Christ personifies love. God’s faithful presence among his people and the gift of his Holy Spirit within us shouts love in the highest of decibels. Deep. Abiding. True. Unconditional. Unmerited. Active. Faithful. Tender love. It’s a love that strengthens and sustains, covers and comforts, protects and provides. It’s a personal and profound love.
The question was recently posed, “what aspect of God’s character has meant the most to you?” I heard the other answers- all precious. Yet I kept coming back to Jehovah Shammah. The Lord is there. His presence. Without his steady loving presence it seems to me all his other wonderful attributes (peace, joy, comfort, justice, etc) would seem just out of my grasp. But in his faithful love he is here: preciously present. Some say love is spelled t-i-m-e. I would suggest it could be spelled p-r-e-s-e-n-c-e.
This (quite indescribable) love surpasses all feelings, and our culture’s version of “love” is mocked by the purity, intensity, and intentionality of God’s love: his three-fold love.
The love of the Father: Lavishing Love
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1). “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).
The love of the Son: Living Love
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us…(1 John 3:16). Not only this but “He speaks to the Father in our defense” (1 John 2:1b).
The love of the Spirit: Lingering Love
“God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:12-13). We know this lingering love produces fruit in accordance with God’s character (Galatians 5).
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” These words from 1 John 4:16 are the nails holding the planks of my boat together in this storm. There’s truth and action here, but what I notice missing is feeling. In part I think this is because whether or not we always feel the love we can still know the truth of his love. It is this truth we rely upon as the tsunami waves hit our little boats.
In an attempt to understand and recognize the many ways his love has been lavished upon us my eyes continue to go back to 2 Corinthians 2:4. “For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.” These are Paul’s words to a church He loves, but I can’t help but see the parallel to God’s love for his people, the Church, whom he loves through the provision of and presence in the gift of his word. My prayer for us today is that “being rooted and established in love” we “may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge [and the power of my pen] that you may be filled to the full measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
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