Psalm 115

Psalm 115:1 – “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!”

To say we love someone when we don’t know them is not love.  It’s ignorance.  True love involves knowing, knowing the good and the bad.  Meditating on this passage, it dawned on me God knew everything about us: our evil hearts, our hate, our putrid-ness, and the complete absence of anything good in us, yet He loved anyway.  For a brief moment, I foolishly thought, “If I could be God, I could love correctly.” (Minimizing God’s attributes/deeds is a besetting sin of mine.)  “Or,” I argued, “Since God is full of loving kindness and truth, then yes, of course He would love!” like it was no big deal.

Then the Spirit brought this thought to my mind:  The weight of what He knew! It was so awful – not “these people…I don’t like them and they don’t like Me” – but “these people…they have a sheer hatred of Me and all that’s holy, and they love everything that is evil.”  This is what God knew and saw. His knowledge required a response from His justice and holiness.  He would have been right to hate and abhor us and be done with it.  Instead, He hated and abhorred His own Son that He might love us.  Astonishing.  Be quiet and worship.

Go and do likewise, Mary.  Love at a cost, at the cost of your own life.  I can’t do this and neither can you!!  We would die trying and still not be successful.  Why? Because it took God to do it. Through faith, though, He has knit us into His body and His love for others is now my love and your love.  Freeing thought!

He did not and does not fail to love, period.  “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!”