Half of 2021 has been harder for me personally than the whole of 2020 was. While I love writing and sharing with you on this blog, sharing has seemed next to impossible at times, even to those closest to me. I’m grateful you are here after all this time away. In the past 14 months, I’ve found amazing solace outdoors, taking in the beauty to be experienced on nature walks. Nature somehow has a way of putting me back in the present moment, and it (usually) helps to drown out the noise in my mind.
I remember one day on one of my walks this spring, a particular daffodil caught my eye. It was not yellow; no yellow at all, just all-white petals. I stopped to look closer. The daffodils all around it were either all yellow, or had white petals surrounding an egg yolk-yellow center. Even the inner trumpet was a pure white. Now, maybe this is completely ordinary to you and you’ve seen many a white daffodil, but it struck me as particularly beautiful. I just stood and stared for a while, in awe of what I’d found. It felt special to behold, like seeing a four-leaf clover, or a black squirrel. It felt meaningful somehow, and I was grateful to be there (and present) for it.
I don’t often mind walking alone, but a couple moments later, I felt a pang of loneliness, wishing I could share the beauty I had found. Feebly, honestly feeling a bit silly, I asked Jesus as I walked toward home, “Did you see that?” Immediately, He was there. This unexplainable knowing of His presence came over me, one I’ve had rarely. Somehow, I knew all at once that Jesus had been and was present with me, I knew He’d heard me, and I just knew the answer was yes, He’s seen it too. “More than that, I see you seeing it,” He seemed to say in my heart. And just like that, I had shared in the wonder I’d found, my longing fulfilled.
When we draw near in faith, Jesus is quick to fulfill our longings with His love.
Being loved by God and loving Him is so foundational to faith because it allows us to stop trying to fulfill our longings with anything but Him. Faithfully trusting His love, we grow in our own ability to show true love, even when we don’t want to (there are plenty of times when this is the case!). Within God’s love, we are set apart as Holy with Christ, aware of and operating from a place that draws from the well of His deep, complete love, completely different from the partial elements of love we may seek after in the world. I’d like to share a few beautiful passages that illustrate God’s incredible love for us.
A question God asked was about, arguably, the most damaging decision of all time. Not an obvious choice to show God’s love, but perhaps that is why I find it so remarkable. In Genesis 3:13, God asks Eve, “What is this you have done?,” when He knew she ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But, did you know that this question isn’t only asked of Eve?
Many years later, after establishing the nation of Israel through Moses and Joshua, God also asks the same question of the wayward Israelites (Judges 2:2). God used the faithfulness of Moses and Joshua to set the stage for the next best version of Eden possible. Eden, after all, represents God’s set of ideal circumstances for humans to thrive in. However, the Israelites could not keep God’s commands or stay faithful to the Lord.
When God asks “What is this you have done,” again, hundreds of years later after He had freed His people from slavery in Egypt, built up their character through trial, and established everlasting covenants with them, I read this question with a tone of heartache, not just anger. With bitten-back tears, not only wrath. God wants the best for them, but He does not make decisions for people, or have faith for people–He opens Himself to the vulnerability of true relationship with humanity, and asks what we’ve done, perhaps not for His benefit but for ours. His love is apparent for Israel; even in their whoring against Him (Judges 2:17), this heart-wrenching question may be read from the heart of a Teacher, guiding the people to search their own hearts and ask it of themselves.
God heartbreakingly models what it looks like to love even when we don’t want to.
Hosea chapter 11 is quickly shooting to the top of my list of favorite Scriptures. In it is, to me, one of the most beautiful love letters in the Bible, straight from YHWH Himself to His beloved people Israel, here referred to as Ephraim, who was one of Joseph’s sons. I love to read this chapter as a love letter from our Father directly to us.
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love…” (Hosea 11:1-4a).
God’s love for Israel is given imagery, and reading on we see that His love never stopped, no matter what the people did. In Hosea, God continues, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” (Hosea 11:8-9). God’s compassion for us is so clear in this passage. Despite His “burning anger,” which unchecked would destroy them, God’s compassion makes destroying His “child,” meaning His people, an impossible option due to His loving character.
The force of God’s love is stronger than anything, and will never fail because He is God.
Other passages that directly express God’s deep, intimate, and devoted love for us include this one from the prophet Isaiah who writes, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold I have engraved you on the palms of my hands . . .” (Isaiah 49:15-16a).
Again we read the comparison of parent and child when it comes to the compassion of God. But I love this passage because it may refer to the nails driven through Jesus’ hands when He was crucified on the cross. Regardless, we are remembered by God on the very body of Jesus, by the scars from the nails that after His resurrection still engrave His hands (John 20:27), even as He is seated at God’s right hand. That is how intimately God loves us.
Remembering relationship with God is a recurring theme throughout in the Bible. Jesus can never forget us as this passage from Isaiah states, for we are engraved, if not on his body then on His heart. In turn, God implores His people not to forget what He has done for them, who He is, and who they are because of Him. He asks the same of us, to remember the ways in which He has been and continues to be faithful to each one of us.
Remembering Whose we are is a vital part of living in relationship with God.
“Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:20). Because we read that God’s heart actually yearns for His people, even when they constantly are unfaithful, committing idolatry against Him generation after generation, I invite you to ponder for a moment the weight of the fact that David was referred to as “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22). Of calling Jesus, David’s descendant, His Son, “with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11), God shows us that personal devotion to our relationship means everything to Him. Yet, we must remember because we are so prone to fall in line with the Israelites’ way, living in a state of pride and attempting autonomy on our own strength apart from our fiercely loving Father.
In Christ, we no longer have to be afraid of the closeness of God’s love. I admit, Jesus’ presence can be difficult. For me it sometimes seems too good, and too close. But intimacy with God is something that we were made for before sin entered in. What does the enemy know of intimacy? It is innately human to feel the the pull of intimacy we were all born with. May we allow it to drive us to, like David, seek after God’s own heart for ourselves.
Intimacy with God is more innate to us than our sinful nature.
After I found the white daffodil, that same night I was talking to Jesus about the beauty of the experience, and I felt His almost-too-good presence near again. He spoke to my heart, “Yes, it was beautiful. I saw you seeing it. That’s the way I see you, you know. The way you stopped to see the beauty of that white daffodil is the way I look at you. You’re so beautiful, I stop and point at you and say to my Father and the Holy Spirit, ‘Look! Isn’t she beautiful?’”
Well, I just about lost it. Maybe you can imagine what hearing that meant to me in a season of isolation, and the intense intimacy of that. It was deeply personal and unique, and yet this is Jesus’ heart towards everyone, even with a “silly” faith the size of a mustard seed that feebly reaches out to Him, He is there for us. Please hear my heart and know that I am not sharing this to brag by any means, but to express the intimacy with which He loves and knows you just as well, and certainly immeasurably more. We are seen, known, appreciated, and loved deeply by Jesus whether we have a relationship with Him or not, and when we reach out to connect with Him, there is truly nothing better. He fulfills our need for love both in the ways we can understand, and far, far beyond them as well. For me that day, it was through a flower. For you, I hope you remember today that He loves you with an unending love, and experiencing that is only ever a reach of your heart in faith away.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. …” (Romans 8:1-3a).
Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.