Spending time with my grandgirls a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about WHY we love someone. Do we love them because they’re attractive? Because they’re kind to us? Because they love us back?
While sometimes those and/or other conditions come into play, real love is deeper than that. I don’t know about you, but I have sometimes struggled to believe in God’s unrelenting love for me. That’s probably why it’s become a theme in many of my novels, starting with Plum Upside Down.
Questions like: Does God love me more when I’m good? Does God love me less when I sin? Does God love my wonderful friend/neighbor/family member more than He loves me? Can God fall out of love with me? Do I deserve God’s love?
We humans are such needy creatures, aren’t we! It’s hard to believe in absolutes, especially in today’s society where we’re often taught that there is no such thing as truth. We need to believe in physical laws, such as gravity — what goes up must come down — but anything in the more ethereal realms? No, you can believe whatever you want, because it’s all in interpretation and it makes no real difference.
And yet, what we believe DOES form who we are. And it forms our eternal destiny as well.
Back in 2015, I shared a post with you entitled Does God Love Me Personally? But today, from the experience of a grandmother who loves her grandgirls fiercely, may I posit that God’s love for us is not conditional? It doesn’t depend on our response to Him. He doesn’t love me more than He loves you, or vice versa. God is love. Period.
Yes, we have to individually decide what to do with God’s love. Whether to accept it or not. Whether to love Him in return or not. But His love is there, steadfast, regardless of what we do with it. We are not big enough, important enough, bad enough to change His love.
Let me show you some examples from my recent birthday party. You can find more pictures of the girls and me in last week’s post, but today I want to share these forms they filled out while planning my party. Yes, they did them out loud in the same room, so that might be why there’s some repetition, LOL. But here goes. (I scanned these and just blotted out their signatures and added their age at time of writing.)
What do you notice, besides that I apparently color with the girls and am crazy? I also riot boks (write books). But what jumped out at me is this Q&A:
I love my Grandma because: She’s my Grandma!
I know my Grandma loves me because: I’m her granddaughter.
They’re right. They don’t have to earn my love. It just IS, because they’re my grandgirls. I can’t imagine not loving them, no matter what they do. They might push me away in their teenage years, might turn their backs (Lord, please no…) and it would definitely gut me, but it would not remove my love for them. My love for these girls (and their parents) does not hinge on any conditions. It is wholly dependent on relationship. They are mine, and I am theirs. We belong together, and nothing can change that.
God’s love is not conditional, either. It is based on relationship. He created us. He loves us. Period.