The other night as I was putting the boys to bed, I was telling Seth "I love you. Papa loves you. Noah loves you. Baby Evan loves you. 'Abela' (grandma) loves you.", as I continued to name as much of the family that I could get in there. "And. Jesus loves you more than all of us combined! That's a whole lot of Love!" He looked at me with a little smile and said, "Like 1 trillion minutes?!!!" (Minutes is Seth's reference for amount these days). "More than 1 trillion!" I said attempting then to come up with the biggest number I could find in his 4 year old vocabulary.
We have heard it may times, haven't we: God loves you! Sometimes, so much so that it's lost on us. It can become just another Christian cliche we say. A mantra of sorts. We read those passages about God's love for us and can place ourselves as 'one more' in the collective mix. Though we believe He loves us, we can start perceiving that love as a generic love. Like some form of pixie dust that God sprinkles upon all humanity in His benevolence, but not as a love that calls us by name and reaches down to find us. Sadly, we can just stay there. For seasons or years. Living with the knowledge of being His beloved, yet not truly experiencing the revelation of that personal love.
Maybe it's the things we have done. Maybe it's the things we have failed to do. Maybe it's the echo of the love we have perceived from others. Maybe it's the things God has allowed us to go through. Maybe it's none of these, maybe it's all of them. Maybe it's just familiarity. Maybe, life has gotten so busy for us that the relationship just doesn't feel as deep and fresh as it was perhaps in years past. Maybe we have let life and busyness rob us of our depth perception. Whatever "it" may be, it doesn't change the fact that His love is unwavering and it will always beckon us to encounter it.
Isn't it easier to feel God's love when we feel we are doing everything right (more or less)? When we feel more deserving of that love. When we are happy with ourselves. It's harder to feel that love when we are struggling with something. I know my tendency is to feel more loved when I haven't messed up. When I am not meeting my own expectations for what I want my relationship and dependence on Him to look like, it's easy to just view His love as being generic and then I don't feel as accountable to respond to that personal love.
However, I don't want to stay in the shallow waters. My heart ache's for more. I know that to truly be the person He created me to be, I need to take the plunge and find that place where His love compels me beyond my levels of comfort and to the place where I'm transformed by it. That kind of revelation of His love has the power to affect everything. The way I love and live. The way I view Him. The way I view others and the world. The way I view the past, the present and the way I view the future.
His love is not a human love. We won't ever get to taste the fullness of His love in anyone. Not lover, nor mother, nor father, nor sister, nor brother, nor friend. Yes, we taste little samples of His love in the love we receive from others, but it's still an incomplete picture of what His love is. Our love can be so fickle, temperamental, conditional, fragile, etc. His love is the opposite, it's unchanging and unconditional.
When I find myself praying over my boys and family, I am reminded that as much as I love them, I can't hold a candle to His love for them. And that's what I want to try to convey to them from an early age. Regardless of the love they receive and perceive in this world, His love will always top it. Which means He can be trusted. Trusted in the storms. Trusted in the valleys. Trusted when disappointment tries to settle in their hearts. Trusted when the victories are numerous. Because He is love, His will will always be rooted in love. And that Love will never fail them.
Now, I am not saying I get it! I still find it amazing that God, the Creator of the Universe, would love li'l old me. I'm not on the billboards. I'm not in any kind of spotlight. I fail at even the little things. I struggle with being organized. I need more grace for others. I could've been more loving in my correcting my boys today. I could've been more gracious with my tired husband. I could've been more friendly to the people I encountered at the store. I could've. But that's easy to recognize in hindsight. When the boys are asleep. When I'm searching my heart before bed. When I'm rethinking my day and talking to my Father.
But that's the beauty of His love. It reaches me. Flawed me. It reaches you. Flawed you. His love is not this generic, ambiguous, shapeless, warm-and-fuzzy love that misses the reality of us. It meets us here. And that's a truth I'm still working on purposefully waking up to, so that I can channel that love to others.
Paul words it better than anyone:
"... so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19
If we strive for something, how about we strive each day to not let His love get lost on us. Let's not let it slip back into that generic category where it's just head knowledge and it's not affecting and moving us forward in a radical way. Let's not stay satisfied with pixie dust love. Let's reach for that love that's already reaching out to us. Let's encounter that love that extends beyond our understanding.
A love that extends beyond..."1 trillion minutes".