Ultimate Love
I lived through the same teenage years that we all face. I did everything I could to annoy my parents and, of course, they were the absolutely most embarrassing and intrusive parents of them all! I had more than my share of public “I love you’s” and “ah, man, my-friends-are-watching-hugs.” I also got a few of those “you’ll understand one day” speeches that more often than not were received with a smug roll of the eyes or a shoulder-shrug and disdain filled response of “whatever, mom.”
And then, all of a sudden, you get smacked upside the head with an “oh, wow, today is that day. She was right, I do get it…finally!” So, mom and dad, if you happen to read this – thanks – and sorry for the “whatevers”.
One of those days was definitely the day Noah was born. I finally started to understand what my mom was feeling when she asked for hugs. Leslie has to keep the baby lotion nearby to keep Noah’s cheeks from getting raw from all the daddy kisses. It’s especially bad when I haven’t shaved in a couple of days. He’s pretty good at letting me mess with him – he has, however, dealt with it from day one. He pretty much just ignores me or greets me with a wave of the hand and a barrage of ‘no daddy no daddy no daddy nooooo daddyyyyyy!’
You really don’t understand how much your family loves you until you have children of your own. You really do lose a sense of self preservation and you focus on that child’s needs 100%. I, like all of you who have children, will die before I let anything harm my child. Our love for our children is stronger than anything. Our greatest fear is of losing that beloved child, and we would do anything to prevent it.
If the love for our children makes us self-sacrificial we have to believe that this is the nature of love in general. So our love for our brothers, sisters, parents, spouse and friends should drive us to the same instinctual self-sacrifice, right? It makes sense to me – and it definitely is easier said than done!
And what of our love for Jesus Christ? Do we have a love so deep for Jesus Christ that we give up our lives to live as He calls us? It sure is what we are asked to do. Again, it’s easier said than done, and it’s probably even more difficult than loving your siblings. Why? I don’t think it’s because God isn’t physically present or because our siblings are easier to love – I think it has a lot to do with the fact that God promises to love us no matter what we think, say, or do.
In fact, I think we sometimes lean on God’s promise to unconditionally love us too much – and we believe it so strongly that we take advantage of it. Dietrich Bonheoffer (theologian from WWII time period) called it ‘cheap grace.’ He didn’t mean to say that God’s grace is cheap, but that we sometimes treat it as though it’s so cheap we can use it as an excuse to live our lives as we want instead of how God intends and, more specifically, how God has called us.
Isn’t this the daily battle we face? When it comes to our children, our greatest fear is losing them. This drives us to sacrifice ourselves out of love to make sure that never happens. When it comes to our God, we are given a promise that we can never fall out of God’s favor! There is absolutely no way we can lose God’s love.
So does God’s promise make it easy to cheapen grace? Maybe it does – but maybe it also gives us a much deeper reason to become what God desires!
blessings,
Eric