A quote I saw recently made me stop and think. “Love is an ocean of emotion in a sea of expense.” I got to thinking about how this is kind of true in a fun- ny way. The love we feel for our marriage partner and even for our kids is an ocean of emotion. It’s a huge swelling of emotions, ups and downs. We have intense feelings about the people that we love. Falling in romantic love with someone brings high emotions. We feel strongly about the person, their qualities, their needs and wants, and about their futures. We often put their own needs above our own and think about the other person, as the common phrase says, as “My Better Half.”
Love for our kids is also intense. Our love compels us to do for them what we would do for no other. We love them intensely, more than any child understands until they have a child of their own. Our concern for them can come across as protective or corrective, but should never hollow.
But love is also a sea of expense. Marriage is hardly a cheap endeavor. And the average cost to bring a child to adulthood has a lot of zeros at the end. Love is definitely not cheap.
But this all brings me back to thinking about God’s love for us. We often forget that God has strong emotions for us. He loves us immensely. His emotions are real and they move him to do incredible things for us.
But God’s love is also a sea of expense. Loving us was not cheap. The cost of his love was the life of his one and only son. Love, in its most pure and excellent form, is truly an ocean of emotion in a sea of expense.
Which brings me to another quote. The philosopher Nietzsche said this about love: Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not. His point is that love distorts our vision, in some ways it makes it so that the object of our love does not appear to us as it does in reality. Love makes the object of our love more beautiful, without flaws, and more attractive than others might see them. And so every husband may say honestly of his wife: she is the most beautiful creature ever to exist. And every husband would be telling the honest truth. Every mother can say of her baby… it is the most wonderful thing she has ever seen.
God‘s love for us also distorts, because his love sees us as objects worthy of salvation, capable of redemption. He does not see us with our flaws, our sin, our weaknesses, but sees us as perfect, therefore he has lavished his love upon us.
“For God so loved the world…”
My sermon series for February will be from 1 Corinthians 13, the famous “Love Chapter” of the Bible.
Additionally, I would like to emphasize missions this month. I am looking for a way to share about missions, missionar- ies, and ministries we support throughout the year. I hope you will join us in person or online for worship this month.
God bless you and yours,
Pastor Dave