Estimated reading time: 3 minutes:-)
A love letter from God, as you sit in your car alone, looking up at the stars through the skylight, feeling alone:
Annabelle,
Don’t you see it?
Don’t you see it?
I painted those stars in the sky. I sprayed those leaves trembling in the night breeze. I crafted each inch of darkness that spreads over you like a canopy.
That wide open expanse, full of stars and galaxies and endless space. I know each square inch as intimately as I know your heart. And you can’t even comprehend the depth of the sky. You can’t even understand the intricacies in a leaf. You can’t even grasp how big I am.
But don’t you see it?
The moon, I know her. The tree in your front yard, I know him. The grass on your lawn, I know it. I know the stars above you each by name. I know every fragment of darkness as if they are kin. I know the world I created.
But I love you.
I know everything.
But I love you.
How many times will you miss it?
I hold each day out to you like a bouquet of flowers. I swarm you with all the ways I love you. How long will you miss it?
Think of the way the sky looks before the sun sets behind the mountains. Don’t you understand that only a loving God could make something so beautiful?
Beauty all by itself ~ how can beauty exist without me?
And you see beauty every day.
In the way you’re clothed each day, I love you.
In the way my breath fills your lungs each day, I love you.
In the way you can hear laughter and taste lasagna and reach your hands up into the air, I love you.
How long will you miss it?
Every. Single. Day. The world cries out under your feet screaming: “God loves you!”
I’m crazy about you.
Some people say, “God loves you” as a cushion phrase to bandage up any wounds. To smooth out the bumps in a conversation. To attempt to comfort.
No.
My love isn’t quiet.
It’s loud. It’s passionate. It’s too big for you to understand. It’s messy. It’s bloody. It’s unconditional.
Look at the cross, Annabelle.
Do you think my love is quiet?
It reaches out to you every. single. day.
I plunged my hand into the mess of the world to love you.
I sent my only son into the world, to be tempted and misunderstood because I love you.
I died because I love you.
Don’t you see it?
Don’t you see it?
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Every day, there are beautiful things crying out the glory and love of God. Every day, nature screams into the faces of every human being. “There is a God! There is a God!” How arrogant and ignorant must we be to miss it? How lost have we become?
Every day, the God of the universe recklessly pursues each human being with a love that doesn’t make sense to human hearts. Every day, a billion things testify to God’s incredible and overwhelming love, and we turn a blind eye.
Every day, God envelopes us with His love, and we’re so fallen and broken we choose to feel alone. Every day, our sinfulness and brokenness nestles into our hearts and spreads like cancer. Every day, we let our lostness nudge the King of the universe out. Every day, we stray.
But that loving King, that loving God who wants you more than you can imagine? Who is passionately in love with you? Who is crazy about you?
He’s standing right beside you as you read.
And He wants to talk with you.
And He wants you to know how much He loves you.
And He’s only one prayer away.
Zechariah 12:1-2 ~ “The Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares: ‘I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling.'”
Zechariah 9:16 ~ “The Lord their God will save his people on that day as a shepherd saves his flock. They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown.”