I don’t always make logical decisions. One weekend, while I was attending college, I decided to drive home even though on Sunday, the day I would have to return, it was calling for snow. For once, the weather people were right. So my parents decided it would be safer for them to drive me back to school. A bit over half way there and we came to a standstill. Someone had gone off the road, hit one of those big electric line poles and knock it into the road. We wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long time. My mom decided we should visit a relative that lived literally right there whom I didn’t think I had ever met before. The woman was elderly and she had two little dogs. She would call the dogs over to her all nice and sweet and then would smack them with a fly swatter. My father has often related this same story so I know I’m not just embellishing it! I have no idea why she did this nor why the dogs kept coming back to her! I guess they always thought she would change and be kind to them. Needless to say I never visited her again and looking back we probably should have called someone for animal abuse.
This is our relationship with the world. The world seems nice and sweet and full of pleasure and fun but once we are in it the “fly swatter” comes out and we are much worse off than before. I’ve felt lately like a yo-yo bouncing first with a greater depth of relationship with Jesus and then slinging myself far away with the cares of the world and my own sinfulness. I am tempted to think that God wouldn’t want such an inconsistent person in His kingdom. But love is a choice. And while there are many things we do that God doesn’t like, His love for us doesn’t change. When we call out to Him and turn back He will come for us as in the parable found in Luke 15 of the lost son. The Father saw him afar off and ran meet him to relieve our bruises and hunger from our abusive relationship with sin in the world. Truly the love God has for us is a divine love.
“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23). There is so much in this verse beside what it says in regards to unity. Jesus is praying to the Father asking Him to help the world understand that the Father loves us as much as the Father loves Jesus. Throughout my Christian career, I’ve always been taught that Jesus loves me (as the song goes) and that God loves me. And of course we all know John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” And yet through all that evidence, I did not realize until rereading John 17:23 the real depth to which God loves us. How great is His love that He loves us as much as His Son?! I cannot even comprehend this amount of love.
Jesus often used parables to communicate spiritual truths so they were easier to understand. So let’s try to break this down. It is easy for us to visualize a dollar, five dollars, 50 dollars, 100 dollars, even 1,000 dollars, maybe even 100,000 dollars but when you start talking in the millions or the billions of dollars my brain doesn’t really comprehend how big of a number that really is. I once read someone make a comparison to time to help us grasp this kind of magnitude. 1,000 seconds is about 17 minutes. A million seconds is roughly 12 days and a billion seconds is about 31.7 years. There is a huge difference between 12 days and almost 32 years! And the Father loves us even more than these references into the trillions, zillions, and beyond. His love in infinite, equal to that of His love for Christ. And yes, He even loves my relative that swatted her dogs with that same amount of love. I’m sure He did not like what she did as I know He doesn’t always like what I do, but His love never changes. How much more should we strive to love one another even those who we don’t like and maybe even call our enemies?