Comprehending God's Love

Feeling unloved? This is a good consideration.

What relationship do you value most? Think of the love you have given, all the time you put into it, and every sacrifice you made to feed it, and imagine all you would do if that person needed you to help them out of a dangerous or difficult situation. Now consider God's love while being sufficient in Himself and having no necessity to do anything for greater survival or joy. He creates because His love is so great that, in willing it, He spoke us into existence. We are not able to comprehend or fathom this love, but we can know just how little we know.

First, it is key to recognize that God is pure, and is synonymous with His love. We know that even though He "has been treated basely by His degenerate Children" and "His own did not know Him", "He spared not His only Son" who suffered not only human existence but died brutally for us "while we were still sinners" (Deuteronomy 32:5, John 1:10-11, John 3:16, Romans 5:8-10). We also know that He uses His power to accomplish the "good of all love God". There is not a moment we are without Him because in Him "we live and move and have our being"(Romans 8:28, Acts 17:28). The all-powerful God of the universe loves us of us as though we were the only thing He love. He loves us indeed with all His might, nothing can stop this love of His, nothing can even come close. There remains one exception i.e. ourselves. Only we can refuse His love. These objective things ought to be the primary step in understanding just what love we are offered.

Second, God's love does not only remain something that has happened long ago (as crazy as it was in magnitude, significance, and unthinkability). On the contrary, it moves to the present particular moment. Often, we need to be quite on the same page as God to be aware and receptive to it. However, it nevertheless comes in all its magnitude, even in the depths of our sin, when we feel farthest away. We can neither understand exactly what God's love for oneself is on our own terms nor on God's terms. All the same, we can know that all the love in the world between people could not add up to the singular love God has for each of us.

In conclusion, if we are to actualize our ability to love and to heal our own hurts, we must receive His love perpetually better. Certainly, in in the context of our corruption, but perhaps even prior to that, we need God's love to be able to love well. Our hurts are sacred places in our hearts to be sure, but God is perfectly sacred. Let us observe what prevents us from being hyper aware of the infinitely powerful love that is always available to us i.e. God's love. We are not able to comprehend or fathom this love, but we can know just how little our ability to comprehend it is., a drop in the ocean. What more needs to be said, since God's love speaks for itself, and it does so far beyond any word.

What love is this that came to us?

What poverty can remain?

What love is more worthy of trust?

Truly none but you Lord, the Lamb standing as if slain!

What hurt could not be healed?

To whom shall we go?

What wound would not yield?

Truly no but you Lord, the Heavenly Dough!

Written by Carter Carruthers & also available at Vivat Agnus Dei