Lent Day 7: Feel the love

How do we know God loves us?
  • Is it because we feel warm all over?
  • Is it because we have a good job? A supportive family? A beautiful home?
  • Is it because we don't have serious troubles or concerns? Because we are sailing through life without a care in the world?
If those were the only signs of God's love - safe surroundings, good health, and stability - then God must not be very loving at all: many people don't have those things.

Sustaining a beautiful world: Situ Patenggang near Bandung
We know God loves us because he tells us so. He watches over us, restores us, and draws us into the community of faith. 


 The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt. Again you will take up your timbrels and go out to dance with the joyful. Jeremiah 31:3-4 NIV

 And God's love especially shows itself in the provision of Jesus. The more I read the accounts in scripture, the more surprised I am by the ordinariness of God-with-us. He prayed, went to "church" (well, to the Jewish version of community centered religion), grew up in a neighborhood family like everyone else. Yet in him and through him, God's love poured into the world. This Lent season, let's focus on the love that propelled God from heaven to live among us. I can't grasp it, my brain won't fully wrap itself around the idea, but my heart sings: yes, oh yes! 
His face shines on us, morning by morning (near Bandung).

 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9

 This was his attitude as he lived among us:
The Sovereign LORD has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will. The Sovereign LORD has spoken to me, and I have listened. I have not rebelled or turned away. I offered my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mockery and spitting.

  Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore, I have set my face like a stone, determined to do his will. And I know that I will not be put to shame. Isaiah 50:4-7 NLT

I want to be more like that. Don't you?

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