Grace, Love and Me

The German theologian and cultural historian, Eugen Biser, reduces the troubles that most of us face to three basic problems: over-activity, loneliness, and angst (anxiety). I don’t know about you, but I’ve been there and maybe a good deal of the time that describes me. And the only real cure is love -- to be loved and to love ourselves and others. When we love and are loved, our over-activity can be seen for what it is – often fear or a need to prove our worth and value by doing, and we can rightly prioritize the many activities in our life so that we aren’t over-extended or burning the candle at both ends. Our loneliness can be transformed into intimacy and our anxiety into peace and courage.  

      Kathleen Norris, relates a simple but profound story in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (p.150): “One morning this past spring I noticed a young couple with an infant at an airport  departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matter if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking, he would respond with absolute delight. It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate of heaven. And as I watched that baby play with any adult who would allow it, I felt awe-struck as Jacob (Genesis 28:10-19), because I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And, as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we’ve done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image. I suspect that only God, and well-loved infants can see this way.” 

     Our tired, lonely, anxious spirits need love as much as our bodies need air. I know that I do. And the good news is that God loves you. He delights in you, just as that baby delighted in every face he saw. It is hard sometimes to accept that. We know what darkness lurks in our heart. We know how unlovely we have been or can be. Honestly, I am not always sure that I could love someone like me. But God does.  

     Jesus knew the Father’s love and he said: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my  love” (John 15:9). We are loved unconditionally and completely. God’s love is a boundless,  bottomless love. But we often suffer from amnesia. We forget that we are loved. And often that is  because we allow other things to come between us and God’s love. The secret to living in that love is to stay connected with Jesus where we experience the love between the Father and the Son. To remain in that love and to grow in it is more than just thinking about it occasionally, like on Sunday morning or when we are at fellowship or when someone jars our memory. To remain in that love means that the love of God is the foundation of our lives, it is our home, our security, our joy. And if it is, we grow in that love and it not only helps us to deal with our fears and our loneliness and our anxiety, it also helps us to love others. And in loving others we begin to heal and transform our world, one person at a time. John Vanier reminds us what love is when he describes love as “revealing to someone else that  person’s own beauty.” God has shown that love to us in Christ and we show it others. Love means showing the other person how special, how beautiful, how precious they are. They can’t really  discover that alone. Another person is needed.  

     We all need love. A man was standing in a grocery checkout line with quite a few other people. He was getting impatient. Others in the line began to complain and gripe. The man looked at the front of  the line at a couple there and they were smiling. “Of course, they’re smiling,” he thought to himself, “they are at the front of the line.” But when he got to the front of the line, he noticed that the checkout clerk had made a sign out of a piece of cardboard and put it in front of her. It said, “We have been  made with love; please treat us accordingly.” Wouldn’t it be great to mentally see that hanging on every person we meet and also be seen on me by every person who sees me? God has made us with love and we are all precious. And one of the great privileges I have in life is to treat each person I meet as loved and a person of worth and dignity. And as I have the opportunity to tell them why – they are loved by a gracious God with a bottomless, unbounded, unconditional love.