Love Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

Wrings our hearts like nothing else, seeing a beloved one suffer, and especially if it is one of our own children.  Surely God has a father heart that watches over us in the same manner.  Scripture even tells us, incredibly, that He has like unto that of, but stronger than, a mother-heart:

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;
    your walls are continually before me. Isaiah 49:15

It has been on my mind of late, this watching our children travel rocky paths, climbing the steep way, sometimes enveloped in the mists of unknowing. And this, this is the best thing that has come out of it: that if I, being human, long to give good gifts to my children and see them happy and fulfilled, surely God, who loves them more perfectly, plans great good for their hearts and their souls as they turn their hearts to Him like living things to the sun. And ultimately the greater thing – that He be glorified, magnified, and Known.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!  Matthew 7:11

Sometimes we are tempted to think, “Oh no, Lord, not this!  Can good ever come from this?”  But as when our children were very young and without understanding, we, too, are very young in understanding God’s ways of blessing, of bringing the richer and better things to pass.

“So often we darken the woods by sadness over one dear to us whom we long to see relieved or released, and all the time the Lord of Light is shining on that heart, and speaking words that will never be forgotten, and which handed on to others like a lighted torch, will travel, who can tell how far?  We must learn to look on and see the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory that is being prepared for our beloved.”*

 “There comes a time when the personal falls from us and we cease from the weariness of being entangled and encumbered in ourselves, and do with all our hearts desire to be perpetually lifted up in spirit above ourselves.  But the trouble of a loved one can throw us into a fever of agitation. And yet to lose our peace is to lose our power to help.  The energies which we might have turned to power are wasted in effortless grieving…if we are to pray we must turn from fear and turmoil.  Job could do nothing for his friends until his own heart was at rest…but there is a peace that must be ours if we are to prevail.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  The peace of our Lord was never a passionless peace.” *

We were made to share the sufferings of one another; to enter into a loved one’s sorrows, to feel one another’s burdens; to have our hearts touched by the path another has been called to walk; to look into their eyes and acknowledge the pain of their circumstance, knowing our own pain makes us sisters and brothers in this human journey that will one day give way to all things made new, all reconciled in Him;  to pray and to encourage and to lend a healing smile.  To this we have been called.  We can do this in a Christ-less manner-- sympathy and sentiment reigning; we can, by God’s grace, do this in a Christ-exalting manner--illuminating the Truth that He bears our sorrows, intercedes before His Father’s Throne for us in our extremity with words beyond what we are capable, has caused us to be fellow heirs of His royal purpose and destiny, and loves with a pure love beyond our wildest dreams.

*quotes from Amy Carmichael, Gold By Moonlight