Love's Story
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. – 1 John 4:7-10, CSB
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. – 1 John 4:7-10, MSG
Fairytales have an important part in the hearts of human beings. They come from a myriad of cultures and times. They show us the commonality of story. They also, almost without fail, involve love in some form or fashion. Over and above all else, they show us our fascination with fantasy and imagination. For all fairytales are to some degree or another ficitional. We know this but, it doesn’t stop us from listening or watching or reading such stories. In fact, I would argue that is part of their charm. They are disconnected from our existence. They seem most often to to begin, “Once upon a time…” and end, “…and they lived happily ever after.” If we are not careful, our reading and interacting with Redemption’s Story can become a fairytale in its own right. It does seem a little pollyannish if we are honest. There is a God who loves you unconditionally. He made you for a relationship with Himself that you cannot have on your own. He sent His Son, in love, to die and to make a way for you to have that relationship forever. The reality is, however, that this is no flight of imagination. This is Love’s story. This is God’s story. Is it fantastic? Is it beyond our wildest imaginations? Does it end with a forever kind of living happily ever after? Yes, yes and yes. But its not a fakery. The best fairytale and the best storyteller cannot spin a yarn like this one. For it is authored by the greatest story writer ever, God Himself. And so, while we probably will all forget some or most of the messages preached in this series eventually, I hope and pray that above all else, you hold on to this idea of love’s story. For in Jesus we have a story that is better than any fairytale. There is more than nostalgia and romance and flights of fancy here. There is unfolding in our lives and in the grander narrative of which we are a minute part, a single story of redemption, one into which you and I have been invited. One in which we never, ever deserve any part. One in which we’ve been loved with an unfailing, unending, go-for-broke, love. A love demonstrated for us on the cross of Christ. There, in love, the Son lays down His life to “…clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.” (MSG, 1 John 4:10b). The reality of this love must never become distant to us. We must remind ourselves of it each day. God loves you, for real. He loves you not in some imaginary way. He in no way ignores all your flaws, mistakes and brokenness. He knows you completely and loves you completely. He loves you in this moment. He loves you from eternity past. He will keep on loving you into eternity future. He doesn’t love in concept. He loves in reality. His is not the love of fairytales. His love is better than that. His story is better too. And somehow- in a way that I cannot hope to understand or explain, somehow you and I have a part of that love story. WOW.
Might God the Father, answer Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus, in our time and in our church:
I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us— to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3: 16-21, CSB)
O the wonders, wonders of His love!
This is NOT an image from the movie, A Beautiful Mind. It is however, the “story boarding” I did for Advent ‘22.