Divine Romance

1 John 4:9, 10, 16,  "This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.....And so we KNOW and RELY on the love God has for us."

I enjoy reading romance novels where boy and girl meet, become acquainted, fall in love, and at the end of the book declare their love to each other and marry.  However, there is always some obstacle to their love at the beginning of the book, and this forms the suspense part of the story.  Often the problem is that the boy and girl, although secretly crazy about each other, do not know whether they are loved in return, so there are doubts and fears and misunderstandings until the end of the book.

If we could know only one thing about God, it should be that He loves us.  He has written us love letters in His creation, in His Word, in His invitation to come boldly to His throne of grace and converse with Him about our needs, in His daily provisions for us, and, above all else, in Jesus' death on the cross.  We have no reason to ever doubt God's love or to fear evil from His hand or to misunderstand His intentions.  We can have complete confidence in His love for us as we give our love to Him in return.

Father, I pray for us in Paul's words from Ephesians 3:17b-19,  "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."  Amen.