I really liked one of the slides that Jeff had up Sunday morning. It was a black and white photo of an infant holding onto the finger of a grown-up’s hand. Something about it seemed so tender and yet so solid – an image of complete vulnerability before a benevolent strength. It reminded me of Psalm 139:13-16 where David talks about how God saw him before he was even born.
When I was in my early twenties I went to a class at a lectureship series. The author talked about a loving God and the whole concept seemed so foreign to me that I waited to talk to him after the class. My question was, “How do you teach someone about the unconditional love of God if they’ve spent their lives believing that God only loved them when they were good enough?”
His answer was that you show them what God says about Himself. He even took the time to sit down with me and look at a couple of passages in the Bible where God talks about being a loving Father to His people. After all, “God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself…” (Genesis 1:27 NLT) After designing the solar system He designed his true masterpieces: you and me.
As Pierre Teilhard De Chardin put it, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” For God this world is all about us, even if the earth does revolve around the sun. He designed the laws of the universe and the miracle of our planet because He wanted to create a place where His children could learn what life is all about. And as the sing team sang this morning, “It’s all about love.” Love is our Father. Love is our heritage. Love is the lesson we’re here to learn. But love isn’t as “soft” as it sounds.
Like a small child, I’ve sometimes confused love with one’s willingness to give me my own way. (Personally, I’ve lamented, “If my mommy really loved me she would let me have all the ice cream I want!” I was in a similar frame of mind when I reasoned, “If God really loved me He wouldn’t allow me to be having this painful experience.”)
God’s love is generous, but it’s not indulgent. You see, indulgence has at its heart the illusion that having more will make it all better. “If I could just get my way,” we demand, “if I could have it easy, then I would be happy.” But sadly, reality doesn’t cooperate. And that fact is for our ultimate benefit; because indulgence doesn’t lead to satisfaction, it leads to insatiability.
If God were to accommodate our every desire (to have whatever we want, to always get our way, to make our road easy and cater to our comfort) we would become less – less happy, less resourceful, less significant and less satisfied. God is not a permissive parent. He loves us far too much not to care about who we are becoming.
God is the ultimate parent, always balanced with His love. He is not permissive and indulgent, giving us whatever we want to shut us up without looking to see what we truly need. He is not authoritarian and conditional, caring more about whether or not we make Him look good than have our needs met. He wants us to grow and to learn, but He doesn’t expect us to be more than we are. God showers us with His mercy and unconditional support even when we’ve blown it. But God loves us too much not to ask us to take our next step toward growth. As Max Lucado put it in the title of one of his books, “God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus.” Now that’s the kind of God I want to put my faith in. How about you?
Going deeper – Take a few moments to read through Psalm 139:1-17. It absolutely blows my mind that God takes such an intimate and detailed interest in every single person He’s created! I think if we spent more time really appreciating how valuable we are in God’s eyes that we would find the courage to be gentler with everyone, even ourselves.
