I like to think of myself as a loving person, certainly I love family but how do I love God? Many hymns talk about loving God. “Thee will I love my strength, my tower.” “Lord, Thee I love with all my heart.” Do I do that, do you? Lines like that are, on one hand, convicting. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). “With all”? I don’t. On the other hand, those lines motivate me. “Long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2:2).
Yesterday I quoted the 18th century minister Robert Leighton about all Jesus endured to save us, “one continued line of suffering, from the manger to the cross.” That’s history. Abraham Lincoln is history. I read about him, respect him for all that he did for our country, but I don’t love him. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20th century, helps me see God’s history with love. “Had there been no despair, no sense of desolation and defeat, but merely the onward march of irresistible power to the achievement of its end, evil might have been beaten, but not bound in captivity to love forever.” (“For All the Saints,” IV, 354). God could have defeated evil in other ways, but the way God chose, the personal anguish and suffering of His Son, shows God’s love and, this is important, makes me look at sacred history with love. You endured all that for me?
So far though, it’s still history. As I said, we respect people from history but seldom love them the way we love family who are present with us, have been present with us. I experience my love for God and Christ increasing when I remember Jesus is now at the right hand of God and will soon appear in glory. He’s not just history; He is now. I want to see and be with people I love. It increases my love for God to picture Jesus reigning at the right hand now and I will soon see Him with my own eyes. “Come down, O Love divine; Seek Thou this soul of mine, / And visit it with Tine own ardor glowing” (Lutheran Service Book, 501:1).
Going to our little cabin for a few days. Be back sometime. Learning the freedom of retirement.
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