What A Marvelous, Amazing, Over-The-Top Love
All my children are off at camp this week and it has left me with a little free time. While they’ve been gone, I’ve generally goofed off. But the other day, I did run across a long-neglected pile of papers.
It had been shoved in the laundry room likely in December since it had a few Christmas cards mixed in with other things. I recycled papers that should have been tossed a while ago, but I took the time to read the Christmas cards and admire the photos they contained.
One card made me roll my eyes. It was from a friend I’ve mostly lost touch with other than via the annual Christmas card. At one time, the two of us were inseparable, but our lives have moved apart in different geographical areas and careers. I appreciate that we still send cards so that I have a general idea of what is happening in their lives. But the way the card enumerated the ways that their children were utterly extraordinary seemed a little over the top.
Granted, I haven’t seen them or their children for a long while, but surely no one is quite that magnificent. The Christmas card assured me that their children were amazing, marvelous, talented beyond measure, exceedingly kind, geniuses with an unmatched work ethic … and on and on. The sheer number of effusive adjectives and phrases in the card was a bit hard to take seriously, but it seemed that the card wanted me to do just that.
I put the card down in exasperation because it was too overenthusiastic. I suppose I am a bit too much of a realist for that to resonate with me. My own children are wonderful and I love them dearly, but they also can make some curious decisions that no one would call amazing or magnificent (as do we all at some time or another).
I almost tossed the card in the recycling, but a thought stopped me: how great must it be to have someone who is thoroughly and enthusiastically in your corner that they simply cannot help themselves when it comes to writing about you in a Christmas card! To have that kind of extravagant support … well, that would be such a gift.
Another thought occurred to me: is that what God feels when God looks at us? Does God glance in our direction with such overwhelming positive emotions that God simply cannot help but gush enthusiastically about us? “Look at this one! So smart, so hard working, such a great human that I created! Gosh, I just love them!”
I held the card a minute longer, turning that idea over in my head. The verse from Romans 8 floated into my brain: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God…”
I think that yes, this is probably the way God loves us – enthusiastically, unselfconsciously, and without any reservation. Perhaps God also, like me, wonders at the curious things we do that are not ideal, but those things do not diminish or change that love.
I tucked the card back in with the other Christmas cards and put them all into the Christmas bin. Yes, I keep the cards to look at each Christmas and marvel at the passage of time. When I pull the cards out later this year, I hope this card that I once viewed as “too much” will remind me that I, too, am loved extravagantly by a Creator who delights in me. What a gift that love is.
