Real Love

Oh Lord, you control the weather.

You have the power to call the storm, and you have the power to calm the storm.

You are in control of the elements, and by that I mean the elemental things of this world as well as the weather. You are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. You are the first cause of the earth, and you will be its end. You made it and you will remake it.

How frustrating it must be when we arrogant humans turn from you and begin to contemplate ourselves! You know it will lead to our damnation, and yet, even to save us, you will not trample our will. Within our will is the existence of our individuality, our inner life. You made us with a plan, but you want us to follow that freely, not live a life of enforced obedience.

We have been through one mild winter storm here, and another one is forecast tomorrow. When it’s cold and things are uncertain, it’s natural for me to turn to God in prayer. So much is uncertain right now, and yet it’s Valentine’s Day. So I am also thinking about love. God and love. God is love.

I once watched a couple kiss. They had been fighting, but the woman demanded a kiss. It was horrifying: The man obeyed, but it was obviously a supreme act of his will, not an overflowing of his heart. His lips quivered as he forced himself to kiss her, and she sat back afterward with a look of triumph, not of love. I remember thinking I would rather not have a kiss, than to have it on those terms.

How much more intensely must God feel that? And yet how many of those who call themselves “Christian” or even “believers” force themselves to go through the motions of reading his Word and praying, and yet the energy and desire has gone out of it?

If you are feeling spiritually dry, and you are bored with your devotions, I want to offer some inspiration:

LOOK at Him. Really just pay attention. Look for his fingerprints, the ones he left all over the world. Look at nature to find him. Look at other people who currently feel deeply connected to Him. For His Spirit will radiate out of them and warm you.

Think about Him: He gave us life. He shared his spirit and breath with us. He meets our daily needs and sends his angels to watch over us. He notices when a hair slips from our heads. He created a plan for our life, and sends us help every day so that we can find and stay on the path that leads to our greatest fulfillment. For Who better knows what will fulfill us than the One who designed us, guided our development in the womb, sustains our life, and hears our thoughts in real time?

Now look inward: We did not design ourselves, and we can’t control our growth or whether we live or die. When you think it over, there is very little that we do control. We like to think we have worked hard to get where were are in life, but really, all we did was capitalize on the advantage we were given. For we did not create our own intelligence, or give ourselves the ability to develop and grow. We didn’t choose our parents, or create the conditions under which we were raised. We had no control over the way others react to us. We did not give ourselves the health to work.

Everything good in our lives came about because we followed through. We honed the talent or desire that came from God and made something out of it. We grabbed the hand that reached out to us. But our foundation, our basic ability to exist, to learn, to find connection, to belong, all goes back to God. And He gave those things to us before we even knew about Him. Those things are gifts.

If I can somehow step out of being entitled, and see that so much of what I considered my “baseline,” is a pure gift, then I can become thankful. And thankfulness is the key to finding God.

There is a scene in the lovely old ’80’s movie, “Joe Vs. The Volcano” when Joe has been drifting at sea on a raft for a very long time. He’s dehydrated and starving, and is seeing hallucinations. And then suddenly, the full moon rises, and all the craziness vanishes as he is lost in contemplation of the full moon, reflecting on the water against the velvet sky.

“Dear God, whose name I do not know: Thank you, for my life,” he says. “I forgot how BIG. . .thank you. Thank you, for my life.”

The sky brings me to that kind of reverence as well (but if you read this blog you know that already!)

Everything in nature leads me to reverence, really: The beauty of the snowflakes, the fascinating plants, trees, fruits and mushrooms, the amazing creatures God has made, everything from tiny little wasps to ladybugs and bumblebees, hummingbirds, dragonflies, kittens, lions; God created the majesty of a white tiger, the curious hippopotamus, the myriad sea creatures, and the mighty blue whale!

Consider the power of water! Imagine the waterfalls that drop hundreds of feet into the jungle, the evidence water leaves behind, like the Grand Canyon in Arizona; the ice walls of Antarctica, think of how big it all is!

Now look at the properties of water, like capillarity. Without that, life wouldn’t be possible, for the blood would not move through our bodies, and water wouldn’t move through the earth after a rain. What about adhesion, the property of water that makes it want to clump together? Adhesion equals water tension, and allows water bugs move on the surface of the water. But why does water do that?

Because that’s what God told it to do.

Now think of the power of wind. Lightning. Electricity. A discharge that, for a moment, is hotter than the surface of the sun. Look at the amazing mysteries uncovered by Nicola Tesla. Study the way energy moves through the earth. New understanding about physics and energy are blowing our minds all over again.

We say we invent new technology, but actually, we merely discover how all of these things work, and then use them. God created them all through Jesus Christ at the foundation of the world! He made the atom, and invented the way waves of energy interact and either cancel each other out or amplify each other; He created each element in the periodic table. The fact that we can predict where elements that we haven’t discovered yet should go on that table is evidence of the hand of an orderly Creator!

That’s just a small bit of Who God really IS. It’s a bit of what my mind can comprehend. But it’s enough to get the ball rolling about how magnificent God is. He alone is Worthy. He alone is Holy. He is God, and there is none else.

That God we were just talking about, the Savior of the world, isn’t satisfied with a “hold your nose and kiss out of duty” kind of love. He is the real thing, and won’t be fooled by a deceitful presentation. He will never be satisfied with merely dutiful love.

Look at who He is! Don’t you think He wants something amazing? Can’t you imagine that He wants to be delighted? (For isn’t that what we want?)

He wants a kiss because we can’t help it, and because it’s the best way we can think of to express the love that overflows our hearts.

He wants a new song, inspired by the realization of His great love for us! He wants our first fruits, our first attempt at things, as an act of devotion. Because He is our Abba, our loving Father.

He wants our first thought in the morning, and our best, purest love. But we merely give him back the love he puts into our hearts in the first place!

That is what it means to love God. It starts with an acknowledgment of Who He really IS, and that He (Love) created and sustains the world. And the knowledge of that reality leads us to worship and adore him with everything we have.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 1 John 4:11

I wish you love, on this Valentine’s Day: Real, lasting love that won’t vanish in an hour! For you are loved for eternity! (Can’t you feel it in your heart after all of this?) You are loved!

And we love you, too!