HeartAche

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1

I saw a friend at church whose wife and kids had left town to visit family for the week. I asked if he was missing them all terribly. He told me, "April, its crazy. The way love is. It's like, when I just THINK about any of them for too long? My HEART starts to hurt!"

I want to know love like that. But from my limited view, being single and childless, I don't think I'm able to truly comprehend that kind of love. And I guess I doubt I'm the sort of person who could ever induce a similarly sweet ache in someone else's heart. But God says we are His children and that He loves us like a father loves a child. And it makes me joyful to explore the possibility that sometimes God just THINKS of me, and his heart starts to hurt because of the way He loves me.

I looove LOVE like that. :)

Endure the Beams of Love

And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love. William Blake

I attended a nightly, weeklong prayer service last week at church. We learned each night about a different attribute of God. We focused on how big and powerful and majestic and holy He is in comparison to how small and sinful we are. We also took several days to look at His grace, mercy and love.

Now, as much as focusing on His power can make my knees shake, there is something even more offputting to me when learning about the latter facets of God. Because when I finally see myself for the miniscule mess I am, and then I begin to comprehend the awesome love of God despite my mess? Well, it hurts a bit. I feel a disconnect - my own ugly depravity juxtaposed by God's beautiful and constant love and mercy for me. I feel like I owe God for such unconditional gifts, but there is no way I can repay the debt. It can be offputting.

I think the very battle of what William Blake refers to as "learning to endure the beams of love" is what causes me so often to wander. To lessen the "pain" of His love, I can do one of two things: walk away from God to ease the feeling, or use it as motivation to become more like Him. Only a perpetual attitude of humility can allow me to draw near to such amazingly unexplainable love and rest in it.

Steven James

I met Steven James at a writers conference. He is an amazing storyteller. He tells a tale in such a way that mouths hang open and people lean forward in their seats in anticipation of the next word.

In his book Story, Steven looks at Ephesians 1:4-5: "Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure."

Steven writes, "According to that verse, before God created anything, he was daydreaming about me. At the dawn of time, I was on his mind. And so were you. While darkness swirled around him, he dreamt about us and he loved us. His unchanging plan has always been to have a close relationship with us. That was God's first dream, and it gave him great pleasure."

It makes me think of friends, who as newly pregnant women looked down at their bellies already fully in love with the tiny kidney bean growing inside. They spent nine months dreaming of what it would be - a boy or a girl? Blonde or brunette? Will it have daddy's eyes or mommy's laugh? And to imagine God like this, looking down at what He would birth - looking down and imagining me! Seeing the special ways I might take after Him, what I might become, and loving me before He even knew me. Man, I can't get enough of that idea.