A Higher Love

God's ways are higher than mine, his thoughts higher than my thoughts, I know that, and yet I'm so confined to my humanity that I can't help but try and attribute Him with my own humanity in order to understand Him.

Last night, for the first time ever, really, I felt the shear panic and beginning of heartache that would occur if something happened (something akin to death or kidnapping) to one of my sons. It turned out to be a communication error for the most part. And yet, for that brief hour when all friends (his, not mine) were searching and various scenarios had begun to play out in all our minds, I felt the beginning of a grief and sorrow that there are no words to communicate.

I've told my oldest that having him has taught me more about the way God loves me than anything. I beleive that it must be part of His grand design in the way He set up the whole parenting thing. Son #1 will soon leave for college so I've been through a wide range of lessons from God through parenting opportunities with him. These last few years, learning to let go, allowing him freedoms of adulthood, being involved without controlling, allowing for natural consequences to occur, have been rich with analogy to my own relationship with Christ.

Last night gave me yet another analogy to draw upon. God's heartache for His lost children. Loving us enough to give us free will in the first place...the will to reject Him, hide from Him, put ourselves in compromising situations, all of it. It's an incredible love. I realize that my love for my own sons is merely a shadow of what He has for me.

Ephisians 3:17,18,19
And 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.

grace