Unconditional loving

When they were 4 years old, and after I had read their bedtime stories, I would tuck my sons into their beds and tell them that I loved them more than all the stars in the sky and more than all the sand on the beaches in all of the world. That’s how much I wanted them know how loved they were.

This enormous love I have for my children, as do we all, cannot prevent the occasional disappointment or extinguished dream, and it doesn’t mean we cannot see their less-than-flattering selves. But I am also quite aware of my needs as a parent. My demands of my children must not be unreasonable, they must have choices – and from a range of options; they need to be offered independence, small at first, until they are ready to establish themselves outside the home.

The love we have is a ‘taste’ of what God’s love is like for us. It is all embracing, forgiving, liberating, dependable, and unconditional. Yet it is not undemanding, for like your love for your children, it calls for some response. It requires acknowledgement, a desire to engage in a loving relationship. We are all called, despite our frailties, poor, rich, sick, healthy, black or white, young or old, to give something of ourselves in return. Indeed we are called to love.

So unfailing is his love that, as Paul so eloquently puts it (Romans 8:35ff), ‘Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ … For I am certain of this, neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.’