Lent: Day Twenty-Four

 
If you are lucky enough to know our dog Daisy- you are lucky enough.

​In taking Daisy into our home, we have been blessed with not just another being, but another source of love and wonderfulness. We all allowed her in faithfully, truly, and without hesitation.
 
Today I chuckled at the thought of how difficult the same situation would be if we were to put God in place of her name. If you are lucky enough to know God, you’re lucky enough sort of thing.

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7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us."
​                                   ~1 John 4:7-12

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Thank you to my beloved wife, Kathleen Walsh Macdonald, for her contribution to this post, and to my life.

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​I just sometimes think I am not able to love well enough, or good enough, or strong enough, or right enough for God. I stumble over that one because I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want God to be embarrassed by me or angry with me, or ashamed of me.
 
But if I were to put my darling Daisy’s name into that same position, I would know that that is not what love is. That here I sit with this amazing entity living in my home, that I welcomed freely and that I love so freely and that loves me right back, unconditionally. This being that looks on me with adoration and anticipation, and hope and joy and love and even when I am not paying attention to her. She sees me. She watches me. She knows me. And I always know that I am important to her, that I am loved by her.
 
It is so easy to dismiss those very same notions, (and sort of arrogant if you think about it), when asked to see God loving us like that. Because it is presuming to know what God is thinking about me based on our judgments or beliefs, shortcomings, or insecurities. And the fact is we don’t need to. 

​God has given us this thing called grace, which basically means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. To say it differently, God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possible love.
 
With God’s grace we can love God, or seek to understand God, or allow God in the same way that we allow beings like Daisy into our lives – what a remarkable and love filled faith we could enjoy. The only ones keeping us from it is us – I find that kind of funny.
 
Philip Yancey once wrote, “We are accustomed to finding a catch in every promise, but Jesus’ stories of extravagant grace include no catch, no loophole disqualifying us from God’s love.”[1]  Take a moment and think about that. God just loves us. You. Me. And all the Daisy’s of the world.

Prayer:  Dear God, I sometimes have trouble making sense of you because your love is more than I am used to. All you ask of me is to receive it, and to share it with others as freely as you have given it to me. Help me today to do just that. Amen.

[1] Yancey, Philip. What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan: 1997) p 52.