THANKFUL FOR GOD’S LOVE

Day 362 of 365 days

When I read that love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not seeking its own, keeping no record of wrongs, I feel so inadequate. But when I remember that You are love and that You will love through me, I have hope. Thank You for wanting to shine through ordinary people like me.

To be loved is a wonderful thing. You don’t need any explanation, do you?” And my answer is it’s not obvious why we should be thankful for the love of God. It’s not. When you’re loved, you’re given something good for you, usually at a significant cost to another. And the better it is for you, the more love and the more cost to the lover, the more love you feel. But it isn’t obvious what that gift is. It isn’t obvious why the love that God gives us and leads us into is good for us.

Let me get at it by comparing the issue of forgiveness. Why should you care about being forgiven? That’s not obvious either. Take a husband who has wronged a wife, perhaps even abused or just spoken cruelly, and he wants forgiveness, and he asks for it. Is that a good thing? Maybe. The question is, “Why does he want forgiveness?” Is it because his conscience is killing him and he is losing sleep at night? Is it because he’s getting an ulcer because of the tension in the air? Is it because he’s starting to be afraid maybe even for his life because she is so angry at him that he is not sure he wants to go to sleep next to her? Are those the reasons why he might want forgiveness? If so, I say there is no virtue in this. It is not obvious why you might want to be forgiven.

We decide to love. While emotion might choose to love easier, we still decide whether or not we will love our pets, our neighbours, our friends, and our family. The reason we can love is that God first loved us. The reality is that our lives are products of God’s love.

A life of love is a life lived in obedience to God’s will. A grateful person seeks to please the One who has blessed him. God has given us the gift of love. Too often we treat that love as if it is something that we deserve, rather than an undeserved blessing given by a good God. To be grateful we need to be humble, we need to be stewards, and we need to be lovers.
This is how we express our thanksgiving to God for His gift of love.