..love

Today is the American Day for love. I have received a fair amount of love today from the girls on my floor, from my parents, and from God. The thing that digitizes these loves from each other is their consistency and their scale. My parents love me infinitely more than my floor mates and they will love my deeper and longer than anyone I have met at SPU but God goes above my parents and loves me beyond words. I have been meditating on Romans 5:8 today, which in essence says, This is how God demonstrates his love for us- that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. The fact that I was making the world a worse place when Jesus decided to scoop me up and hug me is very humbling and comforting. If he loves me enough to save me when I am acting in outright opposition to him then how much more will I feel his love when I am doing what he wants me to do. A relationship cannot be merely based upon what I do for than other person. I can only do so much for someone else and if I don't love that person very intimately then my actions will transition from good deeds to a dead relationship. We understand this in marriage and in friendship so then why is it so hard to transfer that concept into my relationship with God? The things I do for him will flow naturally from me because I love him. They will be painless and effortless and will fill my heart with joy because they are simple expressions of what I feel. My mom has finally begun to understand this and it makes me so happy. She said to me today that she just wants to love God, not do good things for him because that is what she is suppose to do, she simply wants to rest in his presence and feel his arms around her. I am praying that she will get that chance and that the environment of Mountain View will not stifle her desire. I pray that God will use her and my dad to create change there and start of fire of love, so that other people will know they are Christians by their love and not by their intellect. There is no reason for me to avoid the love of God in my life. I am thankful for Valentines Day, the fact that God has helped me embrace my season of singleness and that it is a day that I can truly remember that I am loved so much by God. Jesus loved me so much that he came through the most humble means possible to die, because he loved me. I don't think I can ever understand how incredibility deep that love is and I don't think I have to. I need a God that is bigger than my brain and who can love outside the limits of my mind.