The Boundless Love of God
I started a new puzzle the other day. It’s a picture of a big red barn on which eight colorful quilts are painted. Usually when I start a puzzle, I separate all the straight edged and corner pieces and assemble the frame before doing anything else. This time though, since I was drawn to the colors and patterns of the quilts, I decided to work on each of them first and build the puzzle around them. It felt strange to approach the puzzle this way, but it was quite liberating actually. I felt free to work on the smaller bits and not worry about how they fit into the big picture right away.
It got me to thinking about the way we view God. Most of us have a pretty good idea about God’s boundaries, don’t we? All the rules and laws that we read about in the Bible keep us within the framework that we have become comfortable with. Rules that keep us coloring in the lines.
But what if we were to take a look at things from a different perspective, from God’s perspective? When God created the world, he began with nothing and started creating the world we know, one piece at a time, like the quilts on my puzzle.....(Stay with me here)
As plants and animals began to accumulate, the need for someone to have stewardship over it all arose and God created people. God then saw the need for the people to have some boundaries (because God loved them and wanted to protect them) so rules began to be put in place.
We tend to put God in the framework that we are comfortable with, but by doing so, we limit God’s power and love to that which we can understand. Rules and laws make us feel secure and they have a purpose but we do not find salvation and abundant life by following rules, we find it by following Jesus, who was the ultimate rule breaker. (John 4 - speaking to a Samaritan woman; Mark 3 - healing on the Sabbath; Mark 2 - eating with tax collectors; Matthew 8 - touching a leper; Luke 8 - healing an unclean woman who touched His robe) In all of these instances Jesus broke the rules and reached out with mercy to those who were marginalized because of who they were or what had happened to them. They were cast out by society but touched and transformed by Jesus’ love.
God so loves the world and desires that we love each other with that same love. The spirit of the law is love and if the rules we are following cause us to hurt each other, then its time to stop and say, “What would Jesus do?”
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19
‘How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.....’ We cannot put boundaries on God’s love. God’s love is boundless and it is not within our power to say who is in and who is out. What we are commanded to do is to show love to all and leave the rest up to Jesus.
Have a peace filled day,
In Christ,
Merryl