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Three
words. So easy to say. So full of meaning.
I am
currently visiting my parents. On Sunday, my brother and his family joined us
for the day, as we all attend the same church. At some point in the afternoon
my three-year-old nephew, Ewan, put his arms around me and the conversation
went something like this:
Ewan: “I
love you”
Me: “I
love you too”
Ewan: “Why?”
[When do kids grow out of the ‘why’ stage?!]
Me: “Because
you are you”
Ewan: “I
love you”
Me: “I
love you too”
Ewan: “Why?”
Me: “Why
do you think?”
Ewan: “Because
it’s me”
As I
was lying in bed that night, reflecting on my day, this conversation came back
to me, and it struck me that right there, in that conversation, are some
wonderful truths about our relationship with God…
It was
so sweet to hear those words from my nephew’s lips, so warming, and I just
wanted to hold him tight and never let him go. Children can be fickle – at
another point in the day he had hit me, and sulked in the naughty-corner for
some time until he was willing to say sorry to me, after which spontaneously
came, “I love you”. The words were just as sweet to me then, even though he had
been naughty and unrepentant, as they were when he was full of smiles and fun.
I also wonder how much my nephew really understands what he is saying, he doesn’t
really know yet what it means to love someone through all the ups and downs of
life, but that doesn’t make his words any less sweet or any less genuine at
that moment in time. Maybe God feels the same – maybe it is just as sweet in
his ears to hear us say, “I love you”, even though we are fickle, even though
we do not truly grasp the fullness of meaning in those words, even though we
often demonstrate a very unloving attitude and our affections can easily be
drawn elsewhere, yet his father-heart for us is much greater than my
aunty-heart for my nephew, and so hearing us turn to him and say, “I love you”
is a truly sweet sound in his ears.
And
then there was my response, which was not a theologically thought through
answer, but just the first one that came to me, and the truth – I love Ewan
just because he is Ewan, because he is my own dear nephew, even though he can
drive me crazy at times. Does this not also, in a very small way, reflect
something of how God loves us? It’s not because of anything I have done (Rom.
5:8), He just loves me because I am me, because I am part of his family. If
only I were as quick to grasp this as my nephew was to grasp why I loved him!
May
we, as Paul wrote to the church in Ephesians,
“…have
power…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.” Ephesians 3:18-19
