It’s weird when everything in your life seems to be pointing you to the same lesson. This week I feel that the lesson that God has been placing on my heart is Love. We all know love, it seems ordinary to me most days, something that you say at the end of a conversation, something that you are obligated to do (well for family). I don’t believe, however, that I have ever really stopped to think about how God loves us. If you think about it, the Love that we are accustomed is impossible for God. In our culture, the love that we know is the love that appreciates beauty, loving something when it is beautiful.
However, we are not always beautiful to God, or our loved ones, so how can they love us in that manner? In truth, they really can’t. They see our scars and wounds, and they see us wound. Humans are not pretty creatures. We are ragged and, in truth, ugly! So where does that leave us? God promises that he loves us. So, does he lie? No! Of course not! God loves us with a different kind of love, a love that we aren’t told about. A more meaningful love.
The cliché thing to say here is that their beauty is on the inside, or that God made us beautiful but we tarnished it, but that was not the answer my soul was searching for.
I have been reading Love Beyond Reason by John Ortberg. I picked up the book because I love the way Ortberg writes and last year I read his book God is Closer than You Think and it changed my life. So I was ready for more, I needed more of his soul quenching perspective. I’ve only read the first chapter so far but something he said touched me where I was. He says, there “are two kinds of love- the love that seeks value in an object” (the kind of love that I was talking of earlier) “and the love that creates value.” God does not love us because we are beautiful, God loves us and it makes us beautiful. God loves us, ragged and torn, wounded and bruised. God loves us, and this kind of love slowly makes us beautiful.
