My Father's Love

A sunny day. Counsel on being humble. A great breakfast, and an even greater lunch. Two lessons of English done. Water intake climbing. What could be wrong? I don't really know. Maybe I do. A vague longing for something. I can't quite name it; I don't know what you'd call it. It's that something that's encapsulated by two people enjoying each other's company, by their looking out for each other (spiritually as well as otherwise), by their holding hands, by their laughing together. Would you call that love?

I am wise enough to know now that the happy flushes I felt when around people I "liked" isn't that. Love is deeper, stronger, purer than that. It finds its utmost expression in serving that individual, even if it requires reasonable yet painful self-sacrifice on your part. It isn't dependent on emotion, but intellect. It isn't blind, but acutely aware of the good and the bad, and still flourishes. Yes, this I now know, and am the happier for it. Why I can't tell you, except perhaps because of some faint hope that one day I too will put that knowledge to good use. I never have been able to, at least not in the sense that I currently mean.

Sometimes I just want to know what it feels like to be loved in that way.

On the other hand, I don't. If I never do, I won't have to deal with its unique and sometimes uncomfortable burdens. I won't have to experience the peculiar pain that comes with losing the person, either to someone or something else. I'll never experience the peculiar pain that comes with having to lay them to rest.

It has been said that as deep as a mother's love may be for her child, it's just a tiny rill in the ocean of God's love. I don't know which is stronger, which is more necessary: the love of a mother or the love of a spouse. I'd say the former, but it's debatable I suppose. It seems to me that if a mother's love was the highest form of human-to-human love, no one would bother getting married. They would be content without that. Either way, marital love (even if it is larger) must still be just a drop in the bucket of our Father's love for us.

I may not know the singular joys of courtship or married life, but I do know a bit of the singular joys of God's heavenly love. Where this love abides there is no threat of someone leaving you, of someone abusing you, or of someone dying on you. It is ever constant, ever pure, ever living. It is higher, broader, deeper than the greatest example of spousal love. It can't compare.

No, it can't compare. Especially not in light of the cross. However golden it may be, when held up to that, (though it is an expression of the true) it loses half its luster. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16. That goes for all of us, not only as a whole, but as individuals. For you. For me.

 "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God:" 1 John 3:1.

I may not be able to smile or happily hum because a man loves me, but I can do so because I know my Father, the King of the universe, does. I hope you can too.

Blessings,
Adelaide